Health communication, which aims to strengthen disease prevention and health promotion through discussing and communicating health issues, is a subject that focuses on the effects of communication. However, it is often difficult for health communication to get rid of the cold, boring and rigid feelings caused to the audience since health issues are highly specialized, which will affect the communication effect to some extent. Changing the form of communication is one way to resolve this dilemma , and data journalism is an option to be considered. Data journalism is a new type of news model born with the development of digital media and the opening of data. It uses data mining, data analysis and data visualization methods to visualize boring content, so as to achieve the purpose of improving communication effects.The reporting method of data journalism brings a lot of inspiration to health communication, but its application practice in the field of health communication is relatively few, and relevant studies are also rare. Therefore, the article focuses on this topic and comb previous related studies and experiments. Considering of the factors that may affect the communication effect of health data news comprehensively, such as news framework, visual rhetoric and persuasion effect, this article established an analysis-evaluation model for the health communication effects of data journalism and has a quantitative analysis of more than a hundred health data news using this model. These samples are from media organizations in different countries that have ever won the Global Data Journalism Awards, including Caixin in China, Reuters in the UK, The Pudding in the us, Civio in Spain, Berliner Morgenpost in Germany and so on. This study has found that current health data news has contributed to the enhancement of information credibility and user engagement. However, there are also some problems such as the homogeneity of the subject matter, the lack of persuasion skills, and the possibility of widening the digital divide. Finally, this article puts forward some constructive opinions on the application of data journalism in health communication based on the research results, hoping to improve its communication effect.