{"title":"Using Geovisualizations to Educate the Public About Environmental Health Hazards: What Works and Why.","authors":"Catherine E Slavik, Carolyn Fish, Ellen Peters","doi":"10.1007/s40572-024-00461-8","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Purpose of review: </strong>Informing the public about environmental risks to health is crucial for raising awareness around hazards, and promoting actions that minimize exposures. Geographic visualizations-geovisualizations-have become an increasingly common way to disseminate web-based information about environmental hazards, displaying spatial variations in exposures and health outcomes using a map. Unfortunately, ineffective geovisualizations can result in inaccurate inferences about a hazard, leading to misguided actions or policies. In this narrative review, we discuss key considerations for the use of geovisualizations to promote environmental health literacy.</p><p><strong>Recent findings: </strong>Many conventional geovisualizations used for hazard education and risk communication fail to consider how people process visual information. Design choices that prompt viewers to think and feel, leveraging processes such as individual attention, memory, and emotion, could promote improved comprehension and decision making around environmental health risks using geovisualizations. Based on the studies reviewed, we recommend six strategies for designing effective, evidence-based geovisualizations, synthesizing evidence from the cognitive sciences, cartography, and environmental health. These strategies include: Displaying only key data, tailoring and testing geovisualizations with the desired audience, using salient cues, leveraging emotion, aiding pattern recognition, and limiting visual distractions. Geovisualizations offer a promising avenue for advancing public awareness and fostering proactive measures in addressing complex environmental health challenges. This review highlights how incorporating evidence-based design principles into geovisualizations could promote environmental health literacy. More experimental research evaluating geovisualizations, using interdisciplinary approaches, is needed.</p>","PeriodicalId":10775,"journal":{"name":"Current Environmental Health Reports","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":7.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Current Environmental Health Reports","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40572-024-00461-8","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"PUBLIC, ENVIRONMENTAL & OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Purpose of review: Informing the public about environmental risks to health is crucial for raising awareness around hazards, and promoting actions that minimize exposures. Geographic visualizations-geovisualizations-have become an increasingly common way to disseminate web-based information about environmental hazards, displaying spatial variations in exposures and health outcomes using a map. Unfortunately, ineffective geovisualizations can result in inaccurate inferences about a hazard, leading to misguided actions or policies. In this narrative review, we discuss key considerations for the use of geovisualizations to promote environmental health literacy.
Recent findings: Many conventional geovisualizations used for hazard education and risk communication fail to consider how people process visual information. Design choices that prompt viewers to think and feel, leveraging processes such as individual attention, memory, and emotion, could promote improved comprehension and decision making around environmental health risks using geovisualizations. Based on the studies reviewed, we recommend six strategies for designing effective, evidence-based geovisualizations, synthesizing evidence from the cognitive sciences, cartography, and environmental health. These strategies include: Displaying only key data, tailoring and testing geovisualizations with the desired audience, using salient cues, leveraging emotion, aiding pattern recognition, and limiting visual distractions. Geovisualizations offer a promising avenue for advancing public awareness and fostering proactive measures in addressing complex environmental health challenges. This review highlights how incorporating evidence-based design principles into geovisualizations could promote environmental health literacy. More experimental research evaluating geovisualizations, using interdisciplinary approaches, is needed.
期刊介绍:
Current Environmental Health Reports provides up-to-date expert reviews in environmental health. The goal is to evaluate and synthesize original research in all disciplines relevant for environmental health sciences, including basic research, clinical research, epidemiology, and environmental policy.