HEALTH GeoJunction: place-time-concept browsing of health publications

Health Literacy for the General Public: Making a Case for Non-Trivial Visualizations

Health literacy is concerned with the degree to which individuals can access and understand information to make health decisions. The multifaceted nature of health data presents challenges for individuals seeking to improve their understanding of health. To aid health literacy efforts, we have developed HealthConfection, a visualization tool that uses elaborate and non-typical interactive visualizations to represent health data. In this paper, we report on two studies we conducted with HealthConfection. In the first study, we investigate whether individuals can learn to use non-typical visualizations, and the impact that short, minimalist video tutorials will have on participants’ understanding of the visualizations. The findings from this study suggest that individuals can learn to use non-typical visualizations and that participants who used the tutorials achieved higher scores than those without tutorials. This work indicates that non-typical visualizations are a viable option for conveying complex datasets. Based on this foundation, we conducted a second study to investigate if non-typical visualizations can improve health literacy for the general public. Results show that participants who used HealthConfection achieved higher scores than those who did not interact with the tool. Our work suggests that non-typical visualizations can be used to improve health literacy.

Drowning--a scientometric analysis and data acquisition of a constant global problem employing density equalizing mapping and scientometric benchmarking procedures

Background

Drowning is a constant global problem which claims approximately half a million victims worldwide each year, whereas the number of near-drowning victims is considerably higher. Public health strategies to reduce the burden of death are still limited. While research activities in the subject drowning grow constantly, yet there is no scientometric evaluation of the existing literature at the present time.

Methods

The current study uses classical bibliometric tools and visualizing techniques such as density equalizing mapping to analyse and evaluate the scientific research in the field of drowning. The interpretation of the achieved results is also implemented in the context of the data collection of the WHO.

Results

All studies related to drowning and listed in the ISI-Web of Science database since 1900 were identified using the search term "drowning". Implementing bibliometric methods, a constant increase in quantitative markers such as number of publications per state, publication language or collaborations as well as qualitative markers such as citations were observed for research in the field of drowning. The combination with density equalizing mapping exposed different global patterns for research productivity and the total number of drowning deaths and drowning rates respectively. Chart techniques were used to illustrate bi- and multilateral research cooperation.

Conclusions

The present study provides the first scientometric approach that visualizes research activity on the subject of drowning. It can be assumed that the scientific approach to this topic will achieve even greater dimensions because of its continuing actuality.