Health and science communication are the basis for everything we do at the Health Communication Research Center (HCRC). Science communication tends to explain how things happen, whether it’s how a virus makes a person sick or why a new treatment in cancer research is important to doctors and families. Science communication strives to make the information understandable, relatable and meaningful.
Likewise, health communication strives to communicate science in ways that resonate with audiences and gives them action steps or things they can do to improve their health or prevent disease. Health communication often goes beyond the interactions between cells and applies these findings to populations.
The HCRC uses both science and health communication to translate the findings and transform outcomes. On any given day, we may be writing articles, researching obesity prevention strategies or filming a video. But at the heart of what we do is the shared understanding that good health is built on good science. Our approach is to take the best scientific evidence and communicate it in effective ways to foster change and improve health. Based at the Missouri School of Journalism, we work with an interdisciplinary team to translate evidence into behavior change for populations, large and small.