Newswise — Washington, DC – A Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute (HPI) study has earned the Charles E. Gibbs Leadership Prize for the best paper published in Women's Health Issues in 2015. “Screening Mammography Rates in the Medicare Population before and after the 2009 U.S. Preventive Services Task Force Guideline Change: An Interrupted Time Series Analysis,” authored by Miao Jiang, PhD, and coauthored by Danny R. Hughes, PhD, and Richard Duszak, MD, FACR, is the first HPI paper to win this prestigious award.

The Charles E. Gibbs Leadership Prize is awarded annually to recognize excellence in research on women's health care and policy. Priority is given to manuscripts that report the results of original research and that improve understanding of an important women's health issue.

“The Neiman Health Policy Institute provides important information found nowhere else. This paper demonstrates a drop in breast cancer screening that runs counter to the narrative of screening overuse. That screening decline could potentially lead to additional downstream breast cancer deaths each year. We are honored that Women’s Health Issues recognizes that women and policymakers need this information to make informed health care choices,” said study co-author Richard Duszak, MD, FACR, Neiman HPI chief medical officer and senior research fellow.

“The editorial board congratulates Miao Jiang and her colleagues for conducting a methodologically strong study that makes an important contribution to the ongoing debate over mammography screening guidelines,” said Chloe Bird, editor-in-chief of Women’s Health Issues.

In addition to published papers, the “Neiman Almanac,” on the HPI website, offers reporters, researchers and others free online access to the most up-to-date medical imaging utilization, cost, access and workforce data available. This speeds collection of radiology services data for a number of uses —including news reports, health policy papers and government planning. A how-to video on using the Neiman Almanac is available.

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About the Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy InstituteThe Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute is one of the nation’s leading medical imaging socioeconomic research organizations. The Neiman Institute studies the role and value of radiology and radiologists in evolving health care delivery and payment systems and the impact of medical imaging on the cost, quality, safety and efficiency of health care.

About the American College of RadiologyThe American College of Radiology (ACR), founded in 1924, is a professional medical society dedicated to serving patients and society by empowering radiology professionals to advance the practice, science and professions of radiological care.

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