The American Cancer Society is the nation’s largest private, not-for-profit source of funds for scientists studying cancer. The Great Lakes Division is currently funding three researchers in Indiana and Michigan who are conducting research dealing with lung cancer. These grants total more than $1.5 million.

Dr. Brian Zikmund-Fisher is one of the researchers in the Great Lakes Division whose work is being funded. His five-year grant for "Cancer Risk Perceptions: Highlighting Change and Time in the Picture" began in 2006 and totals $729,000.

Dr. Zikmund-Fisher is a research assistant professor in the University of Michigan’s Department of Internal Medicine and a research investigator at the VA Health Services Research & Development Center of Excellence in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His research focuses on making cancer risk information more relevant for patient decision making. As a cancer survivor, Dr. Zikmund-Fisher has a deep appreciation of how hard it is to be a cancer patient.

"As a patient, being diagnosed with cancer calls up all kinds of emotions and fear, feelings that can be overwhelming. Yet, at the same time you’re also trying to think about all of the information that your doctor is trying to communicate to you, that you find on the internet, that you read in the booklet you are given, and you have to somehow make sense of it…it’s just a very hard task. My goal is to make that task easier."

By utilizing graphics to communicate statistics about cancer risk and the risks and benefits of cancer treatments, Dr. Zikmund-Fisher hopes to make complicated information more understandable and concrete. He uses scenario-based Internet surveys to test information delivery formats and methods of risk communication. Dr. Zikmund-Fisher and his colleagues then refine the most promising ideas and use them in studies with patients who are making care decisions.

"Cancer is an excellent domain for studying this kind of communication. There is a lot of information that patients need to know and make sense of if they’re going to be a partner in the decision-making process about their care," said Dr. Zikmund-Fisher. "It’s also a domain where I think people really care about risk reduction. If we can show people what could happen to their risks if they lived healthier lives, if we can help people to understand the consequences of some of the choices they make, that may be an effective way of helping patients make decisions that will reduce the number of cancers in the population."

With a multi-disciplinary background in social sciences, Dr. Zikmund-Fisher sees himself as a toolmaker who can help clinicians do their job better by exposing the way patients approach decision making.

"I try to think about what patients would want or need to know about their condition and their treatments to help them make better decisions about what they want to do," he explained. "If there is anything that I can do with my research to make that task easier and less demanding, to make it more likely that people will be able to make sense of it all, then I think I am doing some good."

For more information on the Society’s research program and funding, visit www.cancer.org/research.

Pictured: Dr. Brian Zikmund-Fisher

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