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Press Releases
HCRC Offers New Internship in Health Communication
Columbia, Mo. (Feb. 18, 2005) - The Missouri School of Journalism’s Health Communication Research Center (HCRC) is launching a new internship program that allows students to expand their skills well beyond traditional health reporting.
The internship is collaboration among the HCRC, MU Extension and Agriculture Information and the Life Sciences Center. The multi-disciplinary approach will expose interns to fields not traditionally associated with medicine, but fields that are increasingly having impact on cutting-edge medical and public health research.
The program is designed to help interns master the intricacies of medical research, data collection and analysis, as well as in strategic communication and writing. The internship is for one semester, for which the student receives class credit.
“A major part of the HCRC’s growth over the last year has been the influx of students interested in health communication,” said Jon Stemmle, HCRC director of strategic communication. “We felt there was a need among the students for more targeted training in health writing. Our projects are so varied in the health spectrum that interns will be able to gain experience and knowledge in their future careers.”
Ekaterina Pesheva, a graduate student at the School of Journalism, will be the first intern to enter the program. Pesheva, whose background includes working as medical reporter, was thrilled at the opportunity for some hands-on experience in strategic communication research and writing.
“Because the J-School does not have a health communication model per se, the opportunity to do this internship was the next best thing, and this is after all the quintessence of the Missouri method,” Ekaterina says. “I believe the internship will give me a terrific opportunity to learn more about different aspects of health communication and analyzing data critically and doing research and going beyond the ‘he said/she said’ type of reporting, which can be particularly detrimental in covering nuanced health issues.”
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