When a child is diagnosed with a serious illness, parents are faced with a tsunami of emotions, information, choices — and stress. One researcher at UVA Health Children's has found a way to communicate complicated information to parents: Paint them a picture.

Not literally. But during UVA Health Children’s pediatric research day, researcher Caroline Kenyon presented a visual “risk ladder” for Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP). Kenyon created it to encourage doctors to have conversations about mortality with families, as well as give caregivers an accurate visualization of how common SUDEP is. SUDEP affects 1,000 people per year, but that number can feel abstract. Kenyon’s poster shows that SUDEP is almost exactly as common as Sudden Unexpected Infant Death, a diagnosis that encompasses Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, accidental suffocation or strangulation, and unknown causes. It’s slightly lower than the number of kids who go to the ER for a dog bite, but much higher than pediatric deaths caused by drowning, which is about 1 in 10,000.

“Hopefully patients can take these tools home and use it in a clinical setting to just begin this conversation of mortality,” Kenyon said. “We know it’s a very difficult conversation to have, but an important one.”

While Kenyon’s work focused only on epilepsy, she hopes that other specialties will use similar easy-to-understand visuals to help parents and patients feel more informed.