Informing people of health threats is crucial as they may lack situation awareness (SA) of risky situations when they do not have personal experiences or lessons learned from dangerous encounters. In this work, we explored the potential of using a VR data story to raise people’s SA of health risks. We first invited seven participants and conducted participatory design studies to capture the design considerations. Then, we implemented the VR data story with five design features referring to the design considerations. Using a between-subjects study (N=62), we evaluated the effects of the data story on raising SA and investigated the role of each design feature. Our results show that the data story can promote SA by enhancing people’s connection to risky situations. Design features such as immersive visualizations, multiple perspectives, and embodied interactions contribute to this connection. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative findings, we discuss the implications of designing data stories in VR for promoting public health. •This paper conducts a design study with users to explore the design considerations of creating the immersive experience of a data story in VR.•This paper designs an interactive VR data story prototype that aims to raise people’s situation awareness (SA) of public health threats.•This paper examines the effectiveness of the VR data story in improving people’s SA and finds that three features of the story contribute to the improvement of SA.•This paper provides detailed design implications for designing VR data stories for the promotion of public health communication and user engagement.