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 behaviour change to improve health. Traditionally, such discussions have focused on medication side effects as rationales for cancer screening. But communications involving statistics can be challenging, as the Covid-19 pandemic has shown. Although solving communication problems alone won’t always lead to behaviour change — especially among sceptics — evidence shows that people are more likely to understand and be motivated by statistics if communicators present them thoughtfully and strategically.