Challenges and opportunities for using data visualisation to communicate geographic health inequalities: perspectives...

Those who produce and share research on geographic health inequalities face calls to communicate evidence more effectively to various audiences, including the public and policymakers. Data visualisation is a key tool available to these communicators, but little is known about how they approach this in practice or how existing visualisation guidance aligns with real-world constraints. Through 20 semi-structured interviews with these communicators in the UK, we identify recurring challenges faced at three stages of decision-making: why (not) to produce visualisations; what data to show; and how to go about doing that. Challenges include concerns about clarity, stigmatisation, the choice between absolute versus relative measures, and whether or how to visualise uncertainty. We show how these challenges are shaped both by organisational contexts - particularly time, skills, and collaboration - and by gaps between existing visualisation research and the needs of practitioners. Given these constraints, we highlight opportunities for improved practice, including greater collaboration between analysts and designers and more actionable, context-specific guidance. Finally, we call for more research on how to produce maps and charts in this context, considering both the technical and socio-political aspects of geographic health inequalities.