© 2002 by Oxford University Press
Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Vol. 94, No. 11, 799-804,
June 5, 2002
© 2002 Oxford University Press
COMMENTARY |
Risk Charts: Putting Cancer in Context
Affiliations of authors: S. Woloshin, L. M. Schwartz, H. G. Welch, Veterans Affairs Outcomes Group, White River Junction, VT, Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences, Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, NH, and the Norris Cotton Cancer Center, Lebanon, NH.
Correspondence to: Lisa M. Schwartz, M.D., M.S., VA Outcomes Group (111B), Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, White River Junction, VT 05009 (e-mail: lisa.schwartz@dartmouth.edu).
Whether people respond to a given health threat depends in part on how large they perceive their personal risk to be. Typical presentations of health risks (e.g., in the news, in public service announcements, and in direct-to-consumer advertisements) may do little to inform these perceptions. For example, efforts to describe various diseases to the public often take the following form: "This year, approximately 182 800 women in the United States will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, and approximately 40 800 women will die from breast cancer" (1). Similar messages can be found for most well-known diseases [and increasingly, over the Internet, for less well-known diseases, such as hemochromatosis (2)]. What is missing from these messages is context: How does the chance of dying from breast cancer—or any other single disease—compare with the chance of dying from another disease? What is an individual's chance
METHODS
Overview
Data
Disease Categories
Calculations
Age-specific death rates. Ten-year probability of death. Adjusting risk estimates for smoking. Chart Format RESULTS
Risk Chart for Never Smokers
Risk Chart for Current Smokers
DISCUSSION
NOTES
REFERENCES
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Connotea 
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