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About HCRC
The Missouri Health Communication Research Center (HCRC) was established in 2003 at the University of Missouri-Columbia (MU). Under the leadership of Drs. Jane M. Armer and Glen T. Cameron, the HCRC's primary mission is to foster research to improve communication between the health care community and the public.
More specifically, the HCRC's mission is as follows:
- To address the significant disparities in health information and health outcomes for rural populations as well as for particular communities, such as African-American women and adolescents in small towns and rural settings.
- To capitalize on new information technologies while maintaining the strengths of the human bond as crucial in health communication.
- To understand both the role new communication technologies can play in enhancing health communication and the ways new methods can actually be used to reduce the digital divide between the wired and unwired segments of rural society.
- To assist the media to understand the health care community and act as a conduit of information to the public.
To accomplish these goals, the HCRC develops new theories to inform and enhance effective health communication and intervention and test prototypes of new informational materials and decision-support resources and protocols to reify and test the theories.
The Center fosters and coordinates interdisciplinary research efforts in health communication, capitalizing on the University of Missouri's strengths in health care outreach, education and prevention. It also provides support to researchers conducting pilot studies and developing proposals for further extramural funding.
The HCRC office is located in the School of Journalism on the University of Missouri-Columbia campus.
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