Tamar Krishnamurti, PhD, is a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Medicine and Clinical and Translational Science. Dr. Krishnamurti's background is in behavioral decision research (social psychology and behavioral economics). She develops processes, (digital) tools, and communication strategies, grounded in psychological theory, to support informed decision making. Dr. Krishnamurti's research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control, as well as foundation and industry grants.
At the University of Pittsburgh, she leads the Femtech Collaborative - a collective of academic researchers with a unified vision of creating digital tools to address current deficiencies in sexual and reproductive health care. She also co-founded a startup company to develop health tools, which use behavioral science and machine learning to engage patients in their clinical care. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as PNAS, Medical Decision Making, JAMA Internal Medicine, and the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. She won an Ideas of the Year Award from The New York Times and her work has been cited by major news organizations, such as The New York Times, NPR, and MSNBC.
Dr. Krishnamurti enjoys adventurous travel with her husband and two sons, and she doesn’t leave town without a good mystery novel in her bag.
Education & Training
- General Course (Cultural Anthropology), The London School of Economics and Political Science, 2002
- BS (Biological Anthropology), Carnegie Mellon University, 2003
- MS (Social Psychology & Behavioral Decision Research), Carnegie Mellon University, 2006
- PhD (Behavioral Decision Research), Carnegie Mellon University, 2010
Representative Publications
Krishnamurti T, Davis AL, Simhan HN. Worrying yourself sick? association between pre-eclampsia onset and health-related worry in pregnancy. Pregnancy Hypertension. 2019;18:55-57
Applying a machine learning regularized regression to a prospective observational data set of 10,037 nulliparous U.S. women, this study found a significant relationship between psychosocial worry and later pre-eclampsia onset, even when controlling for medical history and other pre-eclampsia risk factors.
Krishnamurti T, Davis AL, Wong-Parodi G, Fischhoff B, Sadovsky Y, Simhan HN. Development and testing of the MyHealthyPregnancy app: a behavioral decision research-based tool for assessing and communicating pregnancy risk. JMIR Mhealth Uhealth. 2017;5(4):e42.
A longitudinal, prospective pilot study used behavioral decision research methods to develop a smartphone app that gathers risk data and communicates personalized pregnancy risk assessments, with the goal of decreasing preterm birth rates in a hard-to-engage patient population.
Krishnamurti T, Argo N. A patient-centered approach to informed consent: results from a survey and randomized trial. Medical Decision Making. 2016;36(6):726-740.
Two studies developed a new approach to creating patient-centered informed consent and found that concise informed consent documents, systematically developed from patients’ self-reported information needs, were more effective at engaging and informing clinical trial participants than the traditional consent approach, without detriment to trial comprehension, risk assessment, or enrollment.
Krishnamurti T, Woloshin S, Schwartz LM, Fischhoff B. A randomized trial testing US Food and Drug Administration "breakthrough" language. JAMA Internal Medicine. 2015;175(11):1856-1858.
A randomized trial identified that the use of terms “breakthrough” and “promising” in FDA press releases increased people’s beliefs in a drug’s effectiveness and strength of supporting evidence; using neutral terms might help consumers make more accurate judgements about these drugs.
Click here for a more complete bibliography of Dr. Krishnamurti’s works.
Research Interests
- Judgment and decision making
- Risk perception and communication
- Behavioral interventions
- mHealth