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Visualizing Risk: Images, Risk and Fear in a Health Campaign

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Abstract

This essay considers the structure of risk in health campaign formation and design by examining an early 20th century federal campaign to reduce infant mortality. Health campaigns navigate the gap between study and practice, translating quantitative findings into prescriptive responses for individual consumers of the text. By focusing specifically on the visual rhetoric of risk, this campaign serves as a case study to examine how the public was taught to see and understand risk and preventive health at a critical point in the development of public health in the United States.

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  1. Department of Communication Arts and Sciences, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Jessica Kuperavage

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Correspondence to Jessica Kuperavage.

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Kuperavage, J. Visualizing Risk: Images, Risk and Fear in a Health Campaign. J Med Humanit 38, 115–132 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-015-9333-9

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