Public Health

Ripon Student Turning Heart and Heritage into a Path of Healing

March 19, 2026

As a child of the Central Valley and a member of a Native tribe, Grace Grinder developed an early awareness of health care disparities affecting rural regions and underserved communities. While in third grade, Grinder lost her grandmother to what she described as too few physicians nearby to...

Q&A: How Public Health Research Can Shape Inclusive Immigration Policies

President Joe Biden and the Democrat-controlled Congress have started boldly with immigration. On Feb. 18, Democrats introduced the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, which would rollback many of...

Rosa Manzo is heading up an asthma intervention project in the Valley.

Asthma Intervention Project Gets Green Light from Genentech

A new community health project addressing asthma issues in the San Joaquin Valley is underway thanks to a collaboration between UC Merced, UCSF and Camarena Health, supported by a grant from...

Celebrate Black History Month by learning about the good work being done on campus.

Eight Stories to Read for Black History Month

Black History Month may feel different this February, after a year of the coronavirus and historic protests for social justice. While coming together couldn’t be more important, under current...

Bioengineer’s Infectious-Cells Research Earns an NSF CAREER Award

Bioengineering Professor Arvind Gopinath received a CAREER award for his research that seeks to understand how living biological materials such as bacterial swarms and fungal biofilms colonize...

The scarcity of research on smoking rates among Arab Americans led Ph.D. student Sarah Alnahari to broaden her focus from minority and immigrant health to the social, historical and political contexts pertaining to tobacco control.

Fellowship Advances Student’s Research into Arab American Smoking Behaviors

Public Health doctoral student Sarah Alnahari was awarded a UC Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) Predoctoral Fellowship to continue her community-driven research examining tobacco use...

Breast Milk Shows Promise for Treating COVID-19 and Protecting Babies

Health psychology Professor Jennifer Hahn-Holbrook and incoming grad student Jessica Marino have a new study suggesting that the breastmilk of mothers who have recovered from COVID-19 contains...

Pandemic Inspires Chemist to Open New Avenues of Research

Professor Michael Thompson doesn’t usually work in immunology or drug development. But his use of X-ray crystallography — research that visualizes the structures of protein molecules to...

New Book Details Best Practices in Research Among Vulnerable Populations

Rosa D. Manzo, Ph.D., associate director of medical education and a project research scientist, has co-authored a new book on community-based and community-engaged research. “Cultura y...

Researcher Examining CBD Effects on Metabolic Syndrome

About 35 percent of Americans have metabolic syndrome, a group of risk factors that raises the risk of cardiovascular disease — the leading cause of death in the United States. If you have...