Graduate Students

Ali Butler

Ali is an MD/PhD student at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University and is the recipient of an F30 grant from NIH and an NSF doctoral dissertation grant.  She completed her PhD in May 2022 and will complete her MD in 2024. Her research illuminates how to present information to patients so that they an use it effectively. For example, transplant centers can be evaluated in terms of success of transplant surgeries and in terms of how quickly the center moved patients off the waitlist for surgery. Different report card formats affect whether lay people judge more favorably centers that are selective in which donor hearts they accept or centers that accept all available donor hearts.  Another project examines how lay people understand vaccine effectivness. How do lay people understand what it meands for a vaccine to be 95% effective?