Decision Analysis Applications in Operations Research

Several factors are changing the landscape of cervical cancer control, including a better understanding of the natural history of human papillomavirus (HPV), reliable assays for detecting high-risk HPV infections, and a soon to be available HPV-16/18 vaccine. There are important differences in the relevant policy questions for different settings. By synthesizing and integrating the best available data, the use of modeling in a decision analytic framework can identify those factors most likely to influence outcomes,…

This video is intended to provide an introduction to decision analysis in the context of medicine and public health and includes a discussion of the goals and elements of a decision analysis, introduces the concept of decision trees, and highlights how Markov models can be used to consider more complex disease decisions. This video is part of the Conducting Cost-Effectiveness Analysis with VA Data (HCEA) free course offered by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs…

This publication is an example of the application of decision science to the management of federal public forests, in particular to meet sustainability goals and multiple use regulations.  Through three case studies, the authors describe four stages of a decision analytic approach: problem structuring (framing the problem and defining objectives and evaluation criteria), problem analysis (defining alternatives, evaluating likely consequences, identifying key uncertainties, and analyzing tradeoffs), decision point (identifying the preferred alternative), and implementation and monitoring…