A daughter of San Joaquin Valley immigrant farmworkers has earned the opportunity to study alongside a nationally prominent health researcher and energize her mission to improve the well-being of agricultural laborers.
In California’s Kern County, nearly 925,000 people live in oppressive heat 125 days per year.
Several types of relief are offered. Residents can get breaks on energy bills bloated by air conditioning costs. Triple-digit temperatures trigger the opening of public buildings labeled “cooling centers.” Schools and businesses get tips about preventing heat-related illness.
Through the lens of Veronica Adrover we have seen buildings rise, graduates cheer and lasers glow. We’ve seen governors, a First Lady and a former U.S. president. We’ve glimpsed a young bobcat in tall grass and celebrated young Bobcats in labs, corridors and classrooms.
LGBTQ2S+ individuals use tobacco and nicotine products at significantly higher rates than straight and cisgender people, research shows. Reasons can include stress and other health problems brought on by systemic and social prejudice, along with barriers to support for breaking the habit.
UC Merced and CalPride Valle Central have partnered with the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences and advocates from across the nation to develop a program to support efforts by LGBTQ2S+ people to quit smoking.
UC Merced's Nicotine and Cannabis Policy Center has embarked on an innovative partnership with university researchers who can track an entire community’s health and habits with samples of human sewage.
The project aims to determine trends and levels of nicotine use in San Joaquin Valley communities through chemicals in wastewater. Collecting hard data on smoking and vaping can aid NCPC’s mission to help local public health agencies, community organizations and tobacco-control researchers give informed responses to the problem.
Lockdowns. Social distancing. Shuttered schools and businesses. The COVID-19 pandemic and its sweeping disruptions set off a stampede of “what it’s doing to us” research, focused largely on schoolchildren. How were students’ academics affected? Their mental health? Their social development?
Left unexamined was whether the pandemic impacted the social cognition of preschool children — kids younger than 6 — whose social norms were upended by day care closures and families sheltered at home.
Solid and sharable research data must go hand in hand with collaboration and caring to tackle the health gaps that trouble minoritized and underserved populations in the San Joaquin Valley and elsewhere.
That was the main message from a national leader in minority health care disparities during a presentation Oct. 29 at UC Merced. Dr. Eliseo Pérez-Stable, director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), spoke to students and faculty at the invitation of the university’s Public Health Department.
Information – how it is shaped, delivered and received – is a thread that runs through three dynamic new majors at UC Merced.
Communication and media; neuroscience; and science, technology and ethics will be available to undergraduate students in the fall semester 2025. The majors are centered in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts but tap into knowledge from the School of Natural Sciences and School of Engineering.
Here’s a rundown:
Scientists, policymakers and concerned community members will gather at UC Merced this week to compare notes and chart new directions to improve air quality and public health in the San Joaquin Valley.
Black and Hispanic faculty members seeking promotion at research universities face career-damaging biases, with their scholarly production judged more harshly than that of their peers, according to a groundbreaking initiative co-led by UC Merced that aims to uncover the roots of these biases and develop strategies for change.
