Increasing the risk competence of patients: an interdisciplinary task

The public debate on health risks has strongly increased in Germany in recent years. One reason for this increase may be the often dramatic manner of news reporting in the media that informs the public on current outbreaks of BSE, bird flu or Ebola. Afterwards, it often became apparent that the sometimes fierce discussions had not addressed the core of the problem at all, and the public was left with feelings of insecurity. In this situation, the Committee of Research into Natural Medicines (Komitee Forschung Naturmedizin – KFN) decided to ask an interdisciplinary working group what could be done to increase the risk competence of interested lay people in this respect.