Talya Miron-Shatz (Hebrew: טליה מירון-שץ) is an Israeli researcher who specializes in medical
decision-making.[1] She is a full professor at the
Ono Academic College, a senior fellow at the
Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, New York,[2] and a visiting researcher at the Wonton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication,
Cambridge University.[3] She has worked as a consultant in the healthcare industry to companies from health advertising, digital health, wellness, and the pharmaceutical industry.
Biography
Miron-Shatz was awarded her PhD in psychology from the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2005 and conducted her post-doctoral studies at the Center for Health and Wellbeing at
Princeton University in the United States, under the supervision of Nobel laureate
Daniel Kahneman, until 2009.[4]
From 2008 to 2011, she was an adjunct lecturer and taught
consumer behavior to students at the marketing department of the
Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.[5] Miron-Shatz is currently a full professor at the Faculty of Business Administration at the
Ono Academic College, where she is the founding director of the Center for Medical Decision Making.[6]
She is also a visiting researcher at the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at
Cambridge University, England.[3]
Academics
The focus of Miron-Shatz's work is how people perceive medical information and medical situations, and the implications for their health.[5] Based on her study of patient knowledge of their own cardiac catherization, Miron-Shatz believes that inclusion in the process is important because "this translates into better adherence to medications and lifestyle changes."[7]
In a New York Times article on
COVID vaccine hesitancy, she stated, "Covid has turned us all into amateur scientists... We are all looking at data, but most people are not scientists."[8]
Miron-Shatz has also studied happiness and its determinants, including financial security.[9] Adding to the approach that placed considerable weight on daily activities as determinants of happiness, she has shown that individuals' thoughts and what they are preoccupied with also play a major role in their happiness. She has revealed that subjectively defined peak, and mainly low moments during the day, add to the prediction of happiness.[10] In a study of life satisfaction at milestone ages, based on surveys measuring well-being collected from 800 women in Columbus, Ohio, Miron-Shatz found that women at milestone ages (e.g., 30, 50) were twice as likely to assess their overall happiness in terms of self-reported health.[11]
Her research has been supported by a Marie Curie grant from the European Research Council, grants from the National Institute for Health Policy Research (Israel), The American Association of University Women, FCB, Pfizer Israel, and Pfizer Europe.[12]
Writing
In 1990, Miron-Shatz published the book My Body Is My Own: A Guide for Dealing with Child Sexual Assault.[13]
Since 2008, she writes the blog "Baffled by Numbers", about navigating information to reach better health decisions, published in Psychology Today.[14]
She also publishes in other venues, such as the American Marketing Association.[15]
In September 2021, Miron-Shatz published her latest book, Your Life Depends on It: What You Can Do to Make Better Choices About Your Health.[16]
Consulting career
Miron-Shatz consults in the sphere of medical decision-making and behavior change in health, involving both prescriber and patient behavior.[17]
She was the co-organizer of the eHealth Venture Summit at MEDICA[18] and ran the Pharma 2.0 series in NYC's Health 2.0 meetup group.[19]
She routinely gives talks at medical industry conferences and for business forum events such as Habit Labs, NY; Digital Health Summit, Philadelphia; Financial Times Digital Health Summit Europe; and Financial Times Digital Health Summit, New York.[20]
Selected publications
Books
My Body Is My Own: A Guide for Dealing with Child Sexual Assault (1990)
Your Life Depends on It: What You Can Do to Make Better Choices About Your Health (2021)
^"Developing and Testing a Patient-Centered Approach for direct oral anticoagulants (DOAC) Information: Increasing Comprehension, Satisfaction, and Adherence".