Making Numbers Meaningful to Patients and the Public with Jessica S Ancker, MPH, PHD, FACMI

• A large proportion of patients and the public have difficulty understanding and applying numbers to personal health decisions. The way we choose to present numbers can help – or make matters worse. In this talk, I will review the evidence about numerical, graphical, and verbal methods for describing quantities, and I will illustrate ways our design choices can help people make sense of quantitative information.

  Level of Instruction: Basic

  

  Only the live session qualifies for CEUs but when possible, we host the recordings on our website and NSGC recommends participants to use their personal email instead of work email addresses to ensure they receive their CEU certificates.

  

  Ambry Genetics is approved as a provider for continuing education program by NSGC and ASCLS P.A.C.E ® Program.

Jessica Ancker, MPH, PHD, FACMI | Presenter

Professor (with tenure), Department of Biomedical Informatics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center

Jessica S Ancker, MPH, PhD, is a tenured professor in the Vanderbilt Department of Biomedical Informatics. She does research in informatics, human factors, health services research, and psychological decision science to study how information design can improve comprehension and decisions. She has been studying how to make numbers more meaningful for more than 15 years, including designing innovations for patients, supporting shared-decision making, developing guidance for professional writers, and testing novel approaches to teaching quantitative methods to medical students, scientists in training, and journalists. As vice chair for education in the country’s largest biomedical informatics department, she also teaches biomedical informatics methods and oversees training programs for graduate students, medical students, clinical informatics fellows, undergraduate research interns, and applied clinical informaticists.

Whitley Hatton, MS | Moderator

Genomic Science Liasion I at Ambry Genetics

Whitley joined Ambry Genetics in 2020 as the Oncology Genomic Science Liaison for the mid-Atlantic territory. In her current role, she serves as a clinical liaison for the field team to educate health care providers and key opinion leaders on genetic testing and genomic medicine. Whitley previously worked at the Tulane Cancer Center as a medical genetic research analyst, helping to increase genetic testing in prostate, kidney, and other cancer patients within the genitourinary clinic. Her most recent research studies investigated family history and germline alterations in metastatic prostate cancer patients and outcomes with first-Line PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitor monotherapy for metastatic renal cell carcinoma, both of which were presented at ASCO-GU. Whitley received her Bachelor of Science degree in Biology with a concentration in genetics at Howard University. She earned her Master of Science degree in Medical Genetics at Tulane University in 2019.