Paul K. J. Han, MD, MA, MPH

Senior Scientist, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences at the National Cancer Institute 

 Research Interests

  • Uncertainty in health care
  • Risk Communication
  • Shared decision making

Dr. Han is a Senior Scientist in the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences at the National Cancer Institute, and maintains an appointment as a Visiting Scientist at the Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation at MaineHealth Institute for Research. Previously, he served as the Director of CORE and faculty at Tufts University School of Medicine from 2010 to 2020. Dr. Han is a behavioral and health services researcher and board-certified general internist and palliative care physician.  He received an M.D. from the New York University School of Medicine, and an M.A. in Bioethics and an M.P.H. from the University of Pittsburgh. He completed Internal Medicine residency training at UCLA, and a fellowship in cancer prevention and control at the National Cancer Institute.

Dr. Han’s research program focuses on understanding and improving the communication and management of uncertainty in health care, and his work bridges the disciplines of behavioral and health services research. His specific research projects focus on risk communication, shared decision making, and predictive modeling, and examine clinical problems in cancer care, genomic medicine, and palliative and end-of-life care. Dr. Han served as Principal Investigator of the Maine Lung Cancer Coalition, a statewide lung cancer prevention and screening program funded by the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation, the Maine Cancer Foundation, and the Maine Economic Improvement Fund. He also led MMC’s collaboration on the Maine Cancer Genomics Initiative, a statewide program of The Jackson Laboratory, aimed at advancing cancer genomic testing in oncology care. Dr. Han has authored over 150 papers in the peer-reviewed medical literature, and is actively involved in initiatives to promote shared decision making and to teach risk communication skills to medical students and physicians.

A complete list of publications can be found on My NCBI

Han PKJ. The need for uncertainty: a case for prognostic silence. Perspect Biol Med. 2016;59(4):567-575. doi: 10.1353/pbm.2016.0049. PMID: 28690246. Read article.

Hillen MA, Gutheil CM, Strout TD, Smets EMA, Han PKJ. Tolerance of uncertainty: conceptual analysis, integrative model, and implications for health care. Social Science and Medicine. 2017 Mar 14;180:62-75. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.03.024. [Epub ahead of print] Review. PMID: 28324792. Read article.

Han PKJ, Umstead KL, Bernhardt BA, Green RC, Joffe S, Koenig B, Krantz I, Waterston LB, Biesecker LG, Biesecker BB. A taxonomy of medical uncertainties in clinical genome sequencing. Genetics in Medicine. 2017 Jan 19. doi: 10.1038/gim.2016.212. [Epub ahead of print]. Read article.

Han PKJ, Dieckmann NF, Holt C, Gutheil C, Peters E. Factors affecting physicians’ intentions to communicate personalized prognostic information to cancer patients at the end of life: An experimental vignette study. Med Decis Making. 2016 Aug;36(6):703-13. doi: 10.1177/0272989X16638321. Epub 2016 Mar 16.

Han PK, Joekes K, Elwyn G, Mazor KM, Thomson R, Sedgwick P, Ibison J, Wong JB. Development and evaluation of a risk communication curriculum for medical students. Patient Education and Counseling 2014;94(1):43-9. PubMed PMID: 24128795.

Han PK, Hootsmans N, Neilson M, Roy B, Kungel T, Gutheil C, Diefenbach M, Hansen M. The value of personalised risk information: a qualitative study of the perceptions of patients with prostate cancer. BMJ Open. 2013;3(9):e003226. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2013-003226.; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3773630.

Han PK, Kobrin S, Breen N, Joseph DA, Li J, Frosch DL, Klabunde CN. National evidence on the use of shared decision making in prostate-specific antigen screening. Annals of Family Medicine. 2013;11(4):306-14. PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3704490.

Han PK. Conceptual, methodological, and ethical problems in communicating uncertainty in clinical evidence. Medical Care Research and Review 2013;70(1 Suppl):14S-36S. PubMed PMID: 23132891.

Han PK, Lee MJ, Reeve BB, Mariotto A, Wang Z, Hays RD, Yabroff R, Topor M, Feuer E. Development of a prognostic model for 6-month mortality in older adults with declining health. Journal of Pain and Symptom Management 2012 Mar;43(3):527-39. Epub 2011 Nov 8.

Han PK, Klein WMP, Lehman TC, Killam B, Massett H, Freedman AN. 2010. Communication of uncertainty regarding individualized cancer risk estimates: effects and influential factors. Medical Decision Making 2011 Mar-Apr;31(2):354-66. Epub 2010 Jul 29.

Han PK, Klein WMP, Arora, NK. 2011. Varieties of uncertainty in health care: a conceptual taxonomy. Medical Decision Making. 2011 Nov-Dec;31(6):828-38. Read article.

Han PK, Lehman TC, Massett H, Lee SC, Klein WMP, Freedman AN. 2009. Conceptual problems in laypersons’ understanding of individualized cancer risk: a qualitative study. Health Expectations 12 (1): 4-17. Read abstract