Essay

Baseline Risk and Misleading Health Headlines

How health headlines can be technically true but misleading when baseline risk, relative risk, and absolute risk are left out.

Indexed essay April 14, 2025 By Devin Teichrow risk communicationpublic healthbaseline riskrelative riskhealth journalismepidemiology

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baseline risk headlines

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By Devin Teichrow. Published April 14, 2025.

Overview

How health headlines can be technically true but misleading when baseline risk, relative risk, and absolute risk are left out.

A few years ago, there was a health headline that went viral:

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