Know Your Chances: Understanding Health Statistics

Steven Woloshin, Lisa M. Schwartz, H. Gilbert Welch M.D., M.P.H.

University of California Press, Nov 30, 2008 - Medical - 158 pages

Every day we are bombarded by television ads, public service announcements, and media reports warning of dire risks to our health and offering solutions to help us lower those risks. But many of these messages are incomplete, misleading, or exaggerated, leaving the average person misinformed and confused. Know Your Chances is a lively, accessible, and carefully researched book that can help consumers sort through this daily barrage by teaching them how to interpret the numbers behind the messages. In clear and simple steps, the authors—all of them staff physicians at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in White River Junction, Vermont—take the mystery out of medical statistics. By learning to understand the medical statistics and knowing what questions to ask, readers will be able to see through the hype and find out what—if any—credible information remains. The book's easy-to-understand charts will help ordinary people put their health concerns into perspective.This short, reader-friendly volume will foster communication between patients and doctors and provide the basic critical-thinking skills necessary for navigating today's confusing health landscape.

Contents

• understanding risk: 9
• putting risk in perspective: 21
• risk charts a way to get perspective: 27
• can i reduce my risk?: 33
• judging the benefit of a health intervention: 35
• not all benefits are equal understand the outcome: 53
• does risk reduction have downsides?: 63
• consider the downsides: 65
• do the benefits outweigh the downsides?: 73
• developing a healthy skepticism: 83
• beware of exaggerated importance: 85
• beware of exaggerated certainty: 99
• whos behind the numbers?: 107
• extra help: 113
• QUICK SUMMARY: 115
• GLOSSARY: 118
• NUMBER CONVERTER AND RISK CHARTS: 124
• CREDIBLE SOURCES OF HEALTH STATISTICS: 128
• NOTES: 131
• INDEX: 137

About the author

Steven Woloshin, MD, MS, Lisa Schwartz, MD, MS, and H. Gilbert Welch, MD, MPH, are general internists, faculty members at Dartmouth Medical School, and researchers in the VA Outcomes Group, Department of Veterans Affairs, White River Junction, Vermont. Woloshin and Schwartz have written many articles together for leading medical journals, and Welch is the author of Should I Be Tested for Cancer? Maybe Not and Here's Why (UC Press).

Bibliographic information

• Title: Know Your Chances: Understanding Health Statistics
• Authors: Steven Woloshin, Lisa M. Schwartz, H. Gilbert Welch M.D., M.P.H.
• Publisher: University of California Press, 2008
• ISBN: 0520942027, 9780520942028
• Length: 158 pages
• Subjects: Medical / Health Care Delivery; Social Science / General; Social Science / Sociology / General