Welcome to this month's edition of the Center for Health Decision Science (CHDS) newsletter. Explore recent decision science publications, events, and news within the field.

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CHDS faculty Stéphane Verguet was senior author on a paper by Boshen Jiao and colleagues that modeled optimization of health interventions to include in an essential benefits package. Published in Social Science & Medicine, the model weighed health gains, financial risk protection, and health equity within a fixed budget.

Jenny Spencer and CHDS colleagues Emily Burger, Nicole Gastineau Campos, Mary Carline Regan, Stephen Sy, Jane Kim, and affiliate Allison Portnoy developed and validated an agent-based model of heterosexual Human Papillomavirus (HPV) transmission using nationally representative U.S. data, recently published in Medical Decision Making.

CHDS faculty Nicolas Menzies and colleagues estimated the potential health and economic effects of a one-time intervention to test and treat latent tuberculosis infection in United States counties with a high tuberculosis burden among racially minoritized populations.

CHDS faculty Ankur Pandya and affiliate Jinyi Zhu discussed the cost-effectiveness of using apolipoprotein B (apoB), non–high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (non–HDL-C), or low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) goals to guide statin intensification in a JAMA opinion editorial.

CHDS welcomes incoming student Armand Zimmerman to the Decision Science track of Harvard’s PhD Program in Health Policy beginning Fall, 2026. Zimmerman holds a Master of Science in Global Health from Duke University and a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences from the University of California, Santa Barbara. 

Virtual; registration required

October 29, 12:00 PM ET

Harvard PhD Program in Health Policy, GSAS

Register and attend the virtual admissions session to learn about the admissions process and the Program, including the Decision Sciences concentration. The session will be recorded and available after the session on the Harvard PhD Program in Health Policy website.

CHDS faculty director Lisa Robinson was featured in a recent Risk Analysis profile highlighting her 40-year career focused on benefit-cost analysis and economic evaluation. 

Read the Harvard Chan story, A Career Promoting Evidence-Based Decision-Making, in Health Policy and Beyond

Read the biography, Lisa Robinson: Benefit-Cost Analyses for Evidence-Based Decisions

Arterburn D, Curtis LH, Toh S et al. Leveraging Real-World Evidence to Inform Regulatory, Clinical, and Coverage Decisions Related to Glucagon-like Peptide-1-Based Therapies: Synopsis of a National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases Workshop. Ann Intern Med. 2026 Sep;179(9):1328-1337.  

Forzy T, Ramponi F, Iversen I et al. Impact of School Feeding Programmes on Educational Attainment and Economic Returns in Five African Countries. Nat. Health 2026. Online ahead of print.

Lyndon S, Gibbons JB, Straub L et al. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Retreatment for Recurrent Depression: A Large Real-World Multisite Cohort Study. Acta Psychiatr Scand. 2026 Jul 30. Online ahead of print.

Montes-Martinez M, Welter LS, Boon P et al. The Economic Burden of Dementia in Europe: COIN-Eu Dementia. J Alzheimers Dis. 2026 Sep;113(2):628-639.

Reed SD, Russell LB, Kim DD et al. Assessing Value of Behavioral Interventions: Designing Cost-Effectiveness Analyses for Food-Is-Medicine Interventions. Circ Popul Health Outcomes. 2026 Sep 9:e013570.

Samur S, Hoban O, Gu NY et al. Recurrence Detection in Patients with Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Following the Current Standard of Care: A Microsimulation Model. BMJ Open. 2026 Sep 16;16(9):e115240.

Siddiqi OK, Jahn B, Rochau U et al. Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Xpert MTB/RIF Ultra for the Diagnosis of HIV-Associated Tuberculous Meningitis. Clin Infect Dis. 2026 Sep 2;83(2):260-266.

Welter LS, Montes-Martínez M, Bohr L et al. The Global Cost of Schizophrenia: A Health Economic Modelling Study. Int J Ment Health Syst. 2026 Sep 29;20(1):36.