Cartoon: Health messaging is all around us

Everywhere we look, we are bombarded with health messages, usually across a variety of media platforms. How to prevent disease. How to treat disease. These days, a person has to be able to think critically not just about the message being transmitted (i.e., Is it credible? Does it apply to my personal circumstances?), but also about the messenger transmitting the message (i.e., Is the information from a trusted source? Are there any conflicts of interest or external motivations that may be influencing the message?). In an age of such complexity, it has never been more important to educate ourselves about health and healthy living. We need to become critical thinkers, so that we can appraise the messages and the messengers. There’s a lot of health information out there – too much to stay on top of by ourselves. That’s why we also need to identify trusted curators of health information, who can help us sort through all the noise to find the signal.

An excellent, plain language resource to start educating oneself about health messages is the free, open-source book by Woloshin, Schwartz, and Welch called Know Your Chances.