Know Your Chances: Understanding Health Statistics by M.S., Steven Woloshin M.D. Steven, H. Gilbert Welch, Lisa M. Schwartz

Product Details

Synopsis

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.

Library Journal

"How to see through the hype in medical news, ads, and public service announcements" boasts the cover of this accessible and reader-friendly book by Dartmouth Medical School faculty and researchers Woloshin, Lisa M. Schwartz, M.D., and H. Gilbert Welch, M.D. (Should I Be Tested for Cancer? ). Assaulted by incomplete, misleading, and overstated health messages by the media, health journals, and pharmaceutical companies, the general public is poorly prepared in how to read the information critically, how to assess credible evidence, and how to interpret statistics. The authors here set out to correct these shortcomings by explaining how to understand risk, judge the benefit of health interventions, and consider outcomes. The subject is complex, but the text is short and simple. Quick, useful quizzes complete coverage and verify that the reader has understood the material. "Learn More" boxes provide easy opportunities to investigate a subject in more detail. A "Quick Summary," glossary, and "Credible Sources of Health Statistics" section are helpful in presenting the basic skills necessary in navigating today's confusing health-media landscape. Recommended for all libraries.-James Swanton, Harlem Hosp. Lib., New York

Biography

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).