Visualizing risk, NHS style

It maybe because I hang out too much in the US these days, but I’ve only just come across this rather excellent  Atlas of Risk from the UK National Health Service:

Visualizing what you are most likely to die of

Visualizing causes of death

The Atlas uses a highly intuitive visualization approach to exploring information on health risks.  Fire the atlas up, and the top causes of death in the UK are shown by overlapping circles, with the area representing relative numbers.

Hover over a circle, and more information on that cause of death is displayed:

Major health risks visualized

When you click on the circle, a breakdown of the specific diseases associated with this cause of death are shown – again, with an intuitive graphical representation of their relative occurrence:

Major health risks visualized

Click on one of these circles, and you are presented with yet more information:

Major health risks visualized

Visualize by gender and age

You can also select cause of death information by gender or age range – and visually watch the relative risks shift between different populations:

Atlas of Risk 4

Visualizing relative risk

If you are interested in relative risks of dying associated with factors such as smoking, obesity or even being murdered, clicking on the second tab from the left will display this information.  Relative risks of dying as a result of 15 conditions or factors are shown, again using circles.

Major health risks visualized

As with the Causes display, clicking on a circle brings up increasing levels of information:

Major health risks visualized

Alternative data displays

And if you don’t particularly like the circles, the data are just as easily shown as bars – for each level of the atlas:

Major health risks visualized

Raw data

On of the rather neat additional features of the atlas is that the original data are available, as well as the visualizations:

Major health risks visualized

Playing with the atlas, I am a little disappointed that it makes no mention of deaths or risks of death related to environmental stressors such as pollution or heat – although these data are much harder to compile.  That said, it’s an excellent example of making public health data accessible, explorable and relevant to people.

The Atlas is, of course, specific to UK populations.  I’m not aware of anything similar in the US, but if you know of anything else like this, please post the link in the comments.

Update September 28 8:45 AM – if you wanted any more proof that my brain’s “muscle memory” is now fully aligned with the US, the first published version of this piece referred to the NIH Atlas of Risk – this has now been corrected.  Many apologies to the National Health Service!