Overview

• A study published in the *Journal of General Internal Medicine* outlines five science-backed strategies to improve patient understanding of medical risks through numeric data.
• Patients often overestimate risks when given only verbal descriptions, but pairing words with numbers reduces misinterpretation and builds trust in healthcare providers.
• The strategies include contextualizing numbers, acknowledging uncertainty, tailoring information to individual patients, and using the teach-back technique to verify comprehension.
• Approximately one-third of American adults have limited numeracy skills, but many still prefer receiving clear and contextualized quantitative data.
• Lead researcher Ellen Peters plans follow-up studies to evaluate the real-world effectiveness of these strategies in clinical practice.