Risk Ladder, Table, or Bulleted List? Identifying Formats That Effectively Communicate Personalized Risk and Risk Reduction Information for Multiple Diseases.

BACKGROUND Personalized medicine may increase the amount of probabilistic information patients encounter. Little guidance exists about communicating risk for multiple diseases simultaneously or about communicating how changes in risk factors affect risk (hereafter "risk reduction"). PURPOSE To determine how to communicate personalized risk and risk reduction information for up to 5 diseases associated with insufficient physical activity in a way laypeople can understand and that increases intentions. METHODS We recruited 500 participants with 0.05). Sequential mediation analyses revealed a small beneficial indirect effect of risk ladder versus list on intentions through gist comprehension and then through perceived risk (bIndirectEffect = 0.02, 95% confidence interval: 0.00, 0.04). CONCLUSION Risk ladders can communicate the gist meaning of multiple pieces of risk information to individuals from many sociodemographic backgrounds and with varying levels of facility with numbers and graphs.