Tag: health

  • Ebola

    I really enjoy reading articles where graphics accompany the text and not just for the want of graphics. While the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is tragic, the data allows for some nice visualisation pieces. Additionally, one could say that the United States is victim to quite a bit of scaremongering as a result of…

  • An Increase in Sexually Transmitted Infections in Boston

    Your humble author has returned to Chicago from several days spent in Boston—among other places. So what better way to follow up on yesterday’s post about prostitution than a small piece from the Boston Globe about the increase in sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in Boston. The cause? Hook-up apps. Because, technology and young people. Credit for…

  • In the World of Damnit, Man

    If you haven’t heard, there is a fairly significant outbreak of Ebola occurring in western Africa these days. The most attention has been drawn since the death of an American national in Nigeria. He had been working for the Liberian government and collapsed at the Lagos airport and died shortly thereafter. So the Centers for…

  • Smoking in the US

    Today’s piece comes from the Washington Post and looks at the prevalence of smoking in the United States and its change over time. Credit for the piece goes to Richard Johnson.

  • Allergens of DC

    Good news and bad news, folks. The good news is that this chart does not apply to people living in Chicago, Philadelphia, or elsewhere. Unless—here’s the bad news—you live in Washington, D.C. In that case, well, prepare to die. You know, if you have allergies. The Washington Post has a nice graphic that outlines the…

  • Explaining Why Some People Are Losing Their Health Insurance Plans

    I have received a few questions in the non-blog world about why certain people have been receiving notices in the post that they are about to lose their insurance plans. The short answer for many of those people is that they likely bought individual, private plans and those plans fall short of the new minimum…

  • Mapping Public Health Data

    Today’s piece maps and charts comes from the Illinois Department of Public Health. The piece combines maps and charting components to detail preventable hospitalisations and emergency room use in the state of Illinois. Ordinarily I would prefer just one map, however, in this case the designers realised that a regional map—with its larger surface area—need…

  • Hunger Strikes

    Guantanamo Bay and the US military prison there almost always spark a debate. For some months now, prisoners have been staging a hunger strike. Increasingly, however, the strike is garnering attention not for itself, but for the US military’s treatment of the prisoners in force feeding them. The National Post looked at just how this…

  • US Life Expectancy

    Earlier this summer I looked at a graphic by Thomson Reuters that compared life expectancy changes across the world from 1990 to 2011. Last month, the Washington Post published an interactive graphic that explores life expectancy (along with obesity and physical activity) across the United States from 1985 to 2010. What I really enjoy about…

  • Mapping Hepatitis vs HIV

    I don’t often write about maps, especially of the choropleth kind. In many cases I choose not to because so many of the maps are one-dimensional: how fast is x growing across the world; which is predominant across the world, y or z? So I was pleasantly surprised by the Economist yesterday when they published…