CHDS Welcomes New Educational Innovation Scholar

Jacob Jameson has been selected to be a Center for Health Decision Science Educational Innovation Scholar for the Spring and Fall semesters (2024). Scholars are graduate students, mentored by decision faculty, who work on a variety of projects that support new instructional models and pedagogical approaches to teach decision science while also improving their teaching and communication skills. Educational innovation scholars are supported by the Alan Colowick Innovation Fund.

Jameson will work on the development of a learning module related to queuing theory, the mathematical study of waiting lines. The resources will highlight queuing applications in health decision science modeling and introduce fundamental concepts and theorems. The goal of this module is for learners to gain literacy in this fundamental Operations Research concept and begin to think about how queuing theory can be used to optimize important systems in healthcare, but also more broadly.

This year’s Educational Innovation Scholars are working with CHDS faculty on two major initiatives. The first is the development of open-access decision science teaching materials that can be integrated into existing STEM curricula in high schools. The second is the development of self-paced online modules that can be adapted for graduate students, fellows and professionals in a variety of settings who do not have access to a formal course.

Learn more about Jameson: Interview with Educational Innovation Scholar Jacob Jameson

Since joining the PhD program in Health Policy with a concentration in Decision Science, Jameson has been working on a variety of projects at the intersection of causal inference, operations research, and machine learning. He has presented his work on emergency department test batching at both the 2023 INFORMS Annual Meeting and the 2023 INFORMS Healthcare Conference. This work, with CHDS faculty Soroush Saghafian, was supported by Jameson’s 2023 Howard Raiffa Fund award. Jameson’s most recent work seeks to use reinforcement learning techniques to determine personalized treatment regimens for patients with resected stage III metastatic melanoma.

Jameson has a longstanding interest in teaching, pedagogy, and education. He has served as a teaching fellow for multiple courses, teaches the Public Policy/Health Policy PhD Math Camp, and taught a short course at the 2023 Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) North American Meeting. Prior to starting the PhD program, Jameson was a middle school mathematics teacher in New Haven, CT.

More about the Alan Colowick Innovation Fund

The Alan Colowick Innovation Fund supports CHDS in pursuing high-value opportunities and initiatives that align with their core mission. Colowick was inspired to incorporate Decision Science into his practice of medicine and subsequent roles in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries by a course he took with CHDS’ Milton Weinstein during his MPH training at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The Innovation Fund currently supports work to broaden the scope and reach of educational efforts through the development of novel instructional models, short-form multimedia content, and case-based learning experiences.

Learn more: Read about Colowick’s gift in the Harvard Public Health Magazine story, Maximizing Outcomes through Better Decision Making: Alan Colowick Innovation Fund