Communicating statistical outputs through health maps
Jessie Roberts, Susanna M. Cramb, Peter D. Baade, Kerrie Lee Mengersen · QUT ePrints (Queensland University of Technology) · 2016
Disease mapping is a powerful tool for exploring spatial variation of health and disease outcomes. The methods behind these maps can be highly sophisticated, and the insights derived from these analyses can be valuable to policy-makers and other decision makers. However, the impact of these maps to create changes in real world health outcomes is limited by our ability to effectively and efficiently communicate to key decision makers. The following report aims to be a resource that will guide the visual design of the National Cancer Atlas as well as the overarching communication strategy that cancer maps will sit within. The information provided aims to ensure that communication and design decisions made in the development of the National Cancer Atlas are well designed and comprehensively informed. This report explores the visualisation platforms used for disease mapping, both current and emerging. The importance of uncertainty communication and the current approaches to uncertainty visualisation are discussed. The report concludes with a report of a communication design workshop that was conducted with the main stakeholders of the National Cancer Atlas project. This report is a summary of the research conducted to date, and will continue to be developed in the future. We hope it will be an informative resource as we move forward with the design of the National Cancer Atlas.