29 August 2014
Seeing Is Believing: Picturing the Nation's Health
Our latest Beautiful Science video looks back a fantastic evening in which we welcomed Professor David Spiegelhalter and Dame Sally Davies to the Library for a discussion with Michael Blastland about the way in which public health messages are communicated.
In our recent Beautiful Science exhibition, we brought together some classics of data visualisation in the field of public health, showing the impact that powerful images can have in transforming the way we think about our own health and that of our society. But is John Snow's map of cholera deaths, or Florence Nightingale's rose diagram of deaths in the Crimean War really better than a table of numbers, like John Graunt’s Table of Casualities, based on his amalgamation of the data contained within the London Bills of Mortality? When it comes to our health, how and why do we make decisions to reform, or not reform our unhealthy behaviours?
Discussing this important question are:
Sir David Spiegelhalter is Winton Professor for the Public Communication of Risk at Cambridge University
Dr. Dame Sally Davies is the Chief Medical Officer for England
Michael Blastland, writer, broadcaster and author of the Tiger that Isn’t
Johanna Kieniewicz