How can we communicate with the public about overtesting and overdiagnosis?

*** Background *** Some diagnostic tests and screening are overused and cause overdiagnosis. This can lead to avoidable patient harms and healthcare costs, reduce healthcare sustainability and have other negative impacts. There are growing global efforts to identify strategies to reduce inappropriate testing and screening. Few lay people are aware about the risks of excessive testing, screening and overdiagnosis. It is important to promote greater public understanding. This understanding may help facilitate informed consent, promote shared decision-making and potentially lead to patient-centred strategies to reduce inappropriate testing and screening. However, many people find current communications about overtesting and overdiagnosis unpersuasive. Messages seem to resonate poorly with pre-existing beliefs and have limited effects on patient behaviours. One issue may be that ‘overtesting; and ‘overdiagnosis’ are complicated umbrella terms that comprise many smaller concepts, and the extent to which the public hold these smaller concepts is unknown. *** The project *** We will design a new generation of public communications about overtesting and overdiagnosis. We will reframe the concepts themselves, to account for public beliefs and experiences. We will also critically re-examine the goals of communicating about these concepts, and develop communication strategies to meet these goals. This phase of our project aims to: 1. Deconstruct the individual ideas that comprise overtesting and overdiagnosis concepts. 2. Examine how those individual ideas resonate with relevant broader public beliefs, experiences and preferences. 3. Use this knowledge to develop new, more intuitive messages about overtesting and overdiagnosis for the public. We are finalising the research design. It will involve mixed-methods human research, examining psychosocial factors, experiences and motivations among lay people. Research that may be available for students includes: • Undertaking and analysing in-depth face-to-face interviews with patients or the public. • Preparation and predictive statistical analysis of psychometric survey scale data about lay peoples’ beliefs related to overtesting and overdiagnosis. • Qualitative analysis of text survey responses, using thematic and discursive analytic approaches. • Critical content analysis or discourse analysis of web-based public discourses about overtesting and overdiagnosis. Please contact me to find out about the exact projects available. We would also consider student-designed proposals for social research that examines the intersection of low value healthcare and public attitudes or behaviours. By undertaking this project, you will advance cutting edge research about patient-centred strategies to reduce low value care and improve patient health decision-making. You will develop your research skills, improve your writing, learn to work in an interdisciplinary team and develop you project management skills. You will have the opportunity to publish your work in a peer-reviewed journal. Our research centre has excellent opportunities for networking and further development for motivated students. *** About us *** I am a postdoctoral research fellow, using ideas from sociology, public health and social psychology to examine public understanding of health and healthcare. Our interdisciplinary team includes researchers from rheumatology, physiotherapy, implementation science, allied health, health sustainability, evidence appraisal, biostatistics and clinical epidemiology. To find out more about our research collaboration, go to: https://www.wiserhealthcare.org.au/