Water Fluoridation has been acclaimed as “one of the best” public health achievements of the twentieth century. Most of the European countries, however, have stopped adding fluoride to their water supplies many years ago, leaving the question: is water fluoridation really necessary?
The challenge of this project was to develop an information graphic diagram that showed statistical and historical data in a way that could show the relationship between them. The study and analysis of this complex topic shows that both opponents and proponents treat this matter in a very unilateral way, often displaying information that is only pertinent to their argument.
The proposed solution is a diagram that relates important information of different aspects of this topic in one cohesive visual system. The main visual strategy utilized to achieve this was to use a circular timeline. Circles can be used to incorporate different sets of data while maintaining a cohesive visual form. The horizontal wedges display the relationship between the tooth decay rate and the year when fluoridation began/stopped for each country. The vertical wedges display important historical figures and key events that either triggered discussion or generated news about this topic. The circular arrangement allows each category to be read independently, but also allows a certain data to be correlated with another data in a different category, allowing the viewer to draw conclusions about this topic. Smaller versions of the diagram were repeated bellow it to highlight other important findings.
