Health and science journalists play important roles in our society. They take complex and challenging scientific information or medical breakthroughs and create compelling and easy-to-understand journalistic stories for traditional and digital platforms. Those stories can focus on health-care systems, environmental disasters, medical ethics, the spread of disease, climate change, agricultural, the food supply, public health, nutrition and exercise, just to name a few. Health and science writers must critically examine medical and science findings to inform a lay audience about issues that may concern them. The Health and Science Journalism area of emphasis provides students with a solid grounding in journalism basics, how to research and report breaking news and in-depth feature stories and hands-on experience using the latest multimedia tools. Through non-journalism electives, students can learn about meteorology, agribusiness, environmental and natural resource economics, public health, issues in human development, the causes consequences and responses to domestic and global hunger, sports nutrition, rural sociology, poverty and epidemiology.