RealRisk is an online tool aimed at press officers and journalists working to communicate risk research from health & the social sciences.

Headlines abound with the latest research about risks: foods which have been linked to cancer, lifestyles that make heart disease more likely, medications that raise the risk of blood clots, habits associated with bad mental health. The articles written about these issues are often frightening and the numbers used in them are often misleading.

RealRisk converts the specialist statistics often used to report research conclusions - including Relative Risks, Odds Ratios and Hazard Ratios - into Absolute Risks which can be more easily understood by everyone. The resulting Absolute Risks are presented in the form of text, icon arrays and bar charts which are free to use.

We want to encourage press officers and journalists to report ‘health risk’ stories with numbers that are widely understandable and don’t cause unnecessary anxiety.

realrisk.wintoncentre.uk