Dr. Talya Miron-Shatz helps providers and patients communicate more clearly within the time constraints of a typical appointment. Talya is a keynote, consultant, and researcher at the intersection of medicine and behavioral economics and the author of the new book Your Life Depends on It: What You Can Do to Make Better Choices About Your Health. You can find her at talyamironshatz.com.
She is full professor at the business school of the Ono Academic College in Israel, senior fellow at the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest in New York, and a visiting researcher at the University of Cambridge.
She was a post-doctoral researcher at Princeton University, and a lecturer at Wharton and the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of over 60 academic papers on medical decision-making. She is CEO of CureMyWay, an international health consulting firm whose clients include Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and Samsung.
Highlights include:
15:49 – TMS: “You have to speak to people in their own tongue and in their own level of understanding. And to realize that their level of understanding, regardless of whether they have a PhD, an MPH, or everything together along with an MD, when they’re sick, it changes.”
20:02 – TMS: “I also know that when you have a sense of a relationship, of trust, be that with a physician or with a system or with a digital health device, you are going to do so much better.”
23:11 – TMS: “The center where I’m a visiting researcher helped the NHS, the English health services, develop something that they call NHS Predict. And I recommend everyone who has breast cancer to take a look at it. It’s online, it’s free. What it does is it tells women the information about the probability that any treatment will work. And it does it in a very clear way. So for example, it can tell a woman – and it’s a true story – this woman was having chemotherapy and it was very difficult for her physically and mostly mentally. But she was taking it because she thought it’s saving my life. Then she went on NHS Predict. She punched in her numbers, the type of tumor she had, etc. And it showed her that out of a hundred women in her condition, chemo is going to help three. She was certain that she got it wrong. She went to her oncologist. She said, can you do this with me? I think, you know, I’m not sure what’s happening. And they punched the numbers together. And that’s what it was. So when we talk about empowerment to me, this is real empowerment. Why? Because she now had the information in a way that you could understand it. Because everyone, you know, even if you have a 10-year-old kid, they understand that out of a hundred women three will see a benefit. It’s like, wow, that’s really not a lot. And even if that’s the level at which you understand it, you understand it. You know, you could be illiterate and still understand it.”
29:14 – TMS: “I think on two things, one is the cognitive component of how to explain things in a simple and approachable way. And the other is the emotional component because health is very emotional.”
Leading with Health is hosted by Jennifer Michelle. Jennifer has a Master’s in Public Health and Epidemiology and is a former EMT. As President of Michelle Marketing Strategies, Jennifer specializes in healthcare marketing. She is on a mission to create a healthcare system that actually cares about the patients and the providers.