Tamara Slosarek

Globally, the most prevalent cause of death are noncommunicable diseases, involving cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and cancer. Many of these diseases – if not most – can be mitigated or even prevented by early treatment and lifestyle changes.

This project aims to form a basis for personalized disease prevention in form of a user-facing software application communicating disease risk. This research shall answer the question on how to achieve comprehension of personal risk using communication strategies dependent on individual literacy. As a first use case, we focus on obesity. This condition is especially interesting, since it states a risk factor for many cardiovascular diseases.

Adding to literacy and comprehension, further reactions to personal disease risk in dependence on personality traits may be examined, for example stress in depending on resilience, optimism, or risk preference. Behavior change shall be motivated as a next step.

Ultimately, the research findings of this project shall help to lower the global burden of noncommunicable diseases by empowering patients and supporting early disease detection and treatment.