Negin Hajizadeh, MD, MPH

Negin Hajizadeh, MD, MPH is a pulmonary and critical care physician whose research focuses on using decision-analytic modeling to better inform and encourage shared decision making about treatments when patients become critically ill. Shared decision making is the process by which patients and clinicians work together to fully explore treatment options and possible outcomes, and make an informed decision together based on patients’ values and priorities. Dr. Hajizadeh’s work focuses on informing health care policy in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) to ensure that patients receive care that produces outcomes in line with their preferences and expectations. She is particularly interested in informing patients with advanced chronic illness because these patients often have predictable events that lead to the last stage in their life, and can be better prepared to make these decisions. By providing tools to the patients, their families and their doctors she hopes to support meaningful advance care planning.

After completing her undergraduate education at Smith College where she majored in both Women’s Studies and Biology, Dr. Hajizadeh went on to earn her MD from Brown University Medical School through the Dartmouth-Brown Combined Medical Program. Upon finishing her degrees, Dr. Hajizadeh completed her internship and residency at Tufts University New England Medical Center in Boston, MA. She then completed a Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellowship at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, CT. Dr. Hajizadeh also received a Masters in Public Health at the Yale School of Public Health and completed a National Library of Medicine Medical Informatics Fellowship at the Yale School of Medicine. These experiences were integral to her decision to focus her career on informing doctor-patient decision making by integrating decision tools within the electronic health record. After completing her fellowships, Dr. Hajizadeh became a full-time Instructor at New York University School of Medicine in the Department of Medicine, a part-time Instructor for the Yale University School of Medicine in the Section of Pulmonary and Critical Care, and a Lecturer at the Yale Center for Medical Informatics. Dr. Hajizadeh served as junior faculty at NYU School of Medicine in the Department of Population Health from 2010-2013, and continues as Adjunct Assistant Professor.

In 2014, Dr. Hajizadeh joined Northwell Health and Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine as Assistant Professor of Medicine where she continues to actively pursue her research, and to provide care for patients as an Intensive Care Attending physician at LIJ. In May 2016, she was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor of Medicine.

Dr. Hajizadeh is an active member of The Society for Medical Decision Making and the American Thoracic Society and also serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Medical Decision Making.

Dr. Hajizadeh’s research focuses on improving end of life care in patients with advanced chronic disease, by informing decision making with prognostic data and effective doctor-patient communication in advance of critical illness. Her broad research skills include comparative effectiveness methods, the science of decision making, shared decision making and patient-centered effective communication/translation of evidence. She has received in-depth medical informatics and comparative effectiveness research training and have completed an AHRQ funded K12 Comparative Effectiveness Research career development award (PI, Braithwaite, NYU). Dr. Hajizadeh has expertise in mathematical modeling (Markov modeling) of alternative treatment decisions for patients with advanced chronic diseases, specifically considering patients’ perspectives. Her work focuses on ‘translating’/communicating mathematical modeling results to patients and their clinicians, within brief decision aids feasible to use at the point of clinical care. Thus-far she has developed and validated a mathematical model for patients with severe COPD choosing between alternative advance directives. She has incorporated this mathematical model within a brief, electronic, web-based decision aid that is currently being tested for usability at an outpatient clinic. Therefore she has experience building a mathematical model for a complex and highly emotionally charged decision for patients with a specific chronic disease. Dr. Hajizadeh was awarded a R21 from the NIA in 2014 to refine this decision aid and to test the feasibility of its implementation in the outpatient pulmonary clinics at North Shore-LIJ Health System and at Queens Hospital. In 2015 she was granted an award from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to develop prognostic models for survival in patients with Cystic Fibrosis and to then translate this data into a decision aid for use at the point of care.

In 2009, while completing her medical informatics fellowship at Yale School of Medicine, Dr. Hajizadeh was also an Instructor of Medicine in the Department of Medicine. She then moved to a part-time position at Yale as instructor, and full–time at NYU School of Medicine. From 2010 to 2013, she was an Instructor of Medicine at NYU School of Medicine, as well as a K12 Comparative Effectiveness Research Scholar. In 2013, Dr. Hajizadeh was granted promotion to Assistant Professor, tenure track at NYU School of Medicine. During the three years as Instructor of Medicine, she published 6 manuscripts in peer reviewed medical journals. She also taught classes in the decision analysis class for post-doctoral students in the CER training program at NYU School of Medicine, and teaches a class on Bias in Decision Making at the annual Society for Medical Decision Making meetings. She is core faculty for both of these classes and will continue to teach over the next several years. Dr. Hajizadeh also presented her work at national academic meetings including two podium presentations (SMDM and NLM). She has dedicated approximately 70% of her time to research, 5% to teaching and the remaining 25% to clinical work. Future plans include establishing a center for collaborative preparation for end of life decision making in patients with advanced chronic diseases which will expand upon her current work for patients with severe COPD and Cystic Fibrosis.

Johanna Andrews, MPH
Senior Research Coordinator
Email: jandrews5@northwell.edu

Melissa Basile, PhD
Research Scientist
Email: mbasile2@northwell.edu

Yale University School of Public Health
Degree: MPH
2008

Brown University Medical School (Dartmouth-Brown Medical Program)
Degree: MD
2002

Smith College
Degree: BA
1997

2015 Spielman Award for Excellence in Research, Northwell Health-Spielman
2011 Society for Medical Decision Making designation to AHRQ Mentored Clinical Scientists, Comparative Effectiveness Development Award
2009-2010 National Library of Medicine Medical Informatics Fellowship, Yale University School of Medicine
2006-2009 Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellowship, Yale University School of Medicine

1. Hajizadeh N., Crothers K., R. Scott Braithwaite. “A theoretical decision model to help inform advance directive discussions for patients with COPD.” BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 2010; Dec 20;10:75.
2. Hajizadeh N., Kashyap N., Michel G., Shiffman R. “GEM at 10: A decade’s experience with the Guideline Elements Model.” AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2011; 520–528.
3. Hajizadeh N., Crothers K., Braithwaite S. “Informing shared advance directive decisions for patients with severe COPD using a decision model.” Value in Health. 2012; March 15;2:357
4. Hajizadeh N., Perez-Figueroa R., Uhler L., Chiou E., Perchonok J., Montague E. (2013). “Identifying Design Considerations for a Shared Decision Aid for Use at the Point of Outpatient Clinical Care: An Ethnographic Study at an Inner City Clinic.” Journal of Participatory Medicine. 2013 March; 5
5. Taksler GB., Keshner M, Fagerlin A, Hajizadeh N, Braithwaite RS. “Personalized estimates of benefit from preventive care guidelines: A proof of concept.” Annals of Internal Medicine. 2013; 159(3):161-168.
6. Hajizadeh N., Crothers K, Braithwaite RS “Using modeling to inform patient-centered care choices at the end of life.” Comparative Effectiveness Research. 2013; 2(5):497-508.
7. Hajizadeh N., Uhler L, Perez Figueroa R. (2014). “Understanding patients’ and doctors’ attitudes about shared decision making for advance care planning.” Health Expectations 2014 Oct 22; Epub ahead of print.
8. Hajizadeh N., Goldfeld K, Crothers K. (2014) “What happens to patients with COPD with long-term oxygen treatment who receive mechanical ventilation for COPD exacerbation? A 1-year retrospective follow-up study.” Thorax. 2014 May 14; Epub ahead of print.
9. Uhler LM., Pérez Figueroa RE, Dickson M, McCullagh L, Kushniruk A, Monkman H, Witteman HO, Hajizadeh N. (2015) “InformedTogether: Usability Evaluation of a Web-Based Decision Aid to Facilitate Shared Advance Care Planning for Severe Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.” JMIR Human Factors 2015;2(1):e2
10. Hajizadeh N., Goldfeld K. (2015) “The Burden of Transitions After Invasive Mechanical Ventilation for U.S. Individuals with Severe Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: An Opportunity to Prepare for Preference-Congruent End-of-Life Care?” Journal of American Geriatric Society (JAGS) 2016; in press
11. Hajizadeh N., Uhler, L; Herman, S.; Lester, J. (2016) “Is shared decision making for end-of-life decisions associated with better outcomes as compared to other forms of decision making?” A systematic literature review; in press

View more at PubMed