Health advocacy with Gapminder animated statistics

Gapminder Foundation, which grew out of the Global Health Division of the Karolinska Institute, Sweden, took advantage of the new information technology (IT) opportunities and created a non-profit web service, which presents a fact – based view of global development trends.

Abstract

How can the public s understanding of public health trends be improved? How can health researchers increase their impact on public opinion and policy-making? More media coverage, such as press reports and TV interviews, are needed; however, the internet nowadays provides alternative options for educating and communicating. Gapminder Foundation, which grew out of the Global Health Division of the Karolinska Institute, Sweden, took advantage of the new information technology (IT) opportunities and created a non-profit web service (http://www.gapminder.org), which presents a fact (data) – based view of global development trends. With the freely accessible data from many international organizations (e.g., World Bank, World Health Organization [WHO], and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO]), the abstruse numbers were