How to Effectively Communicate Risk in Health Articles

One of the most challenging parts of being a health and science writer is being able to communicate risk to readers in a way that is meaningful. Most people are familiar with what a risk is. Every time we leave our house, we face any number of them, from being hit by a car to eating a sandwich with food poisoning to running out of gas miles from the nearest gas station.

But these are concrete risks, things that are similar to what we faced when the human species was young (okay, maybe not the gasoline example). The risks associated with medical research are not as easy for readers to grasp, especially if they only have a basic understanding of science, and also when the risks are presented as paragraph after paragraph of percentages and rates.

Health and science writers, whose job it is to communicate risk from new medical studies, can make it much easier for readers to understand what the risks presented mean for them. This is especially important when comparing the risks associated with different treatments or lifestyle changes.

Be clear about hazards and exposure

David Ropeik, a former television reporter and a speaker on how to communicate risk, writes that every risk has two components: a hazard and an exposure to that hazard. If you don’t have both, there is no risk.

For example, if a new chemical is found to be a carcinogen, but people are not exposed to it, there is no risk to them. Hurricanes can also present a hazard, but if you live in Montana, you might never be exposed to the effects of the hurricane — again, there’s no risk.

Ropeik lists several questions that journalists should ask when writing about risk.

For hazards:

How much of a substance, activity, etc. becomes a hazard? For some hazards, such as ionizing radiation, the risks increase with each exposure. But for some chemicals, the chemical is only harmful above a certain threshold. Even ingestion of water carries a risk, but only when you drink lots of it.
What is the result of the hazard? It’s not enough just to tell your readers that something is hazardous. You should also let them know the potential outcomes of that hazard, such as death, stomach ache, birth defects, or lung cancer.
Who is affected most by this hazard? Some hazards may not affect everyone equally. Mercury is a good example, where the developing fetus of a pregnant woman is at higher risk. With COVID-19, younger people have a much lower risk (although this is not non-existent) than older adults.

For exposure:

At what dose is something a hazard? This is similar to the first one listed above. In addition to mentioning how much of a substance, activity, etc. is hazardous, you should make it clear whether people will actually be exposed to this level. For example, is a chemical found in air pollution at levels that makes it hazardous?
What route of exposure makes it a hazard? The U.S. Food & Drug Administration lists chemicals that are generally regarded as safe (GRAS). However, while these are generally safe for ingestion, they may not be safe to inject in your blood or inhale.
How long do you need to be exposed to something for it to be a hazard? Salmonella in food is hazardous even if you just eat it once. But some of the risks of binge drinking alcohol accumulate over time.
Which age groups (or other groups) are most at risk? Lead and mercury are more harmful to infants than to older adults. Likewise, people with other health conditions are more at risk from COVID-19.

Use absolute risk rather than relative risk

For many readers, relative risk is easier to understand than absolute risk, but absolute risk usually conveys the risk (or the size of the benefit) better.

If you write that a new medication “reduces the risk of dying from the influenza virus by 50 percent” (relative difference), many people will think, “that’s great, maybe I should ask my doctor about it.”

But a 50 percent decrease is not always a large change, especially if the initial risk is small. Suppose your risk of dying from the flu is 2 in 100,000 — then the medication would reduce your risk to 1 in 100,000.

The difference in risk between taking the medication and not taking it is 1 in 100,000, or a 0.001 percent decrease (absolute difference). This is not at all a large change.

So when you want to communicate risk, try to use the absolute risk, whenever possible. This is not always easy to figure out, because some medical papers may not include the data you need to make the calculation. Also, you will often have to search elsewhere for the general risk from a disease or activity (as I had to do with the influenza risk above).

Use everyday language when communicating risk

The goal of health and science writers is to translate research findings and other scientific information into something that can be read by your specific audience. If you are writing for a general audience, there are many things you can do to make the story easier to read (and to avoid their eyes glazing over when faced with many numbers).

One of these is using everyday language when talking about quantitative data. For example, instead of writing 50 percent, write “half.” Or for 51.2 percent, write “about half.”

You can also translate percentages to actual numbers. For example, if the study reported that 36.7 percent of 275 people benefitted from a treatment, also provide the actual number of people who benefitted, such as “101 out of 275 (36.7 percent).”

Talk to study authors and independent experts

If you are a little unsure about how to describe the benefits (risk reduction) of a new medication or treatment, or the health risks of a possible carcinogen or excessive screen time, find experts who can explain it to you. When I interview experts, I often ask them to explain a new finding in a way that the general public would understand. They sometimes have a unique way of describing it that didn’t occur to me.

If you are writing about a new study, you should try to speak with the study authors. This isn’t always possible, especially when working on a tight deadline and if it’s a story that’s getting a lot of attention from media outlets. In those cases, I may follow up with the authors by email, asking them a couple of clarification questions, sometimes just to make sure that the author agrees with the way I described the results.

You should also reach out to independent experts who can describe the risks in their own terms. They may also let you know if they disagree with how the authors of the paper present the risks or benefits. They can also help you put new research in perspective, such as letting you know that there isn’t a lot of research in a particular area, so a new study might not be as impressive as it seemed at first.

Other resources to help you communicate risk

This may seem like a lot of things to keep in mind while writing about medical research, but learning to communicate risk is an important skill for health and science writers to learn. It is also something that gets easier with time.

If you’d like to dive even more into how to communicate risk when writing health articles, here are some excellent resources. If you have other helpful tools or websites, feel free to leave them in the comments below.