Communicating Statistics on the Health Effects of Climate Change

Health care professionals act as science communicators when they translate complex statistics to inform their patients about medical issues and motivate behavior change to improve health. Traditionally, the focus of such discussions has ranged from medication side effects to rationales for cancer screening. But communications involving statistics can be challenging, as the Covid-19 pandemic has shown. Although solving communication problems alone wont always lead to behavior change - especially among skeptics - evidence shows that people are more likely to understand and be motivated by statistics if communicators present them thoughtfully and strategically. © 2022 Massachusetts Medical Society.