Our Work

Policy makers and insurers promote the use of generic drugs because they can deliver large savings without sacrificing quality. But these efforts meet resistance from the public, who perceive generic drugs as inferior substitutes for brand name counterparts. Building on literature showing that negative emotions reduce risk-taking, the authors hypothesize that receiving bad medical news (i.e., negative information about one’s health) prompts patients to favor brand name over generic drugs as means to safeguard their health. The evidence exploits low-density lipoprotein cholesterol test results, where a discontinuity from clinical guidelines enables the authors to estimate the causal effect of bad medical news.

Get to know Kathryn McDonald, PhD, MM, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Health Systems, Quality and Safety.

There is increased acceptance that social and behavioral determinants of health (SBDH) impact health outcomes, but electronic health records (EHRs) are not always set up to capture the full range of SBDH variables in a systematic manner. The purpose of this study was to explore rates and trends of social history (SH) data collection—1 element of SBDH—in a structured portion of an EHR within a large academic integrated delivery system.