Public Health

From Dreams to Degrees: Graduates Celebrate with Scholarship Donors

June 12, 2025

UC Merced’s graduating Class of 2025 recently celebrated its achievement at the campus’s spring commencement, joined by family members, close friends and loved ones. For two graduates, Jahaira Morales and Bryan Gutierrez, the ceremony also was an opportunity to meet with a couple of...

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...

Connection Between COVID-19 and Loss of Smell Uncovered by Research Team

About 70 percent of people with COVID-19 suddenly lose their sense of smell, although fewer of them seem to realize it, according to a new “living analysis” by a research team that...

Professors Nancy Burke and Whitney Pirtle are the two newest MacArthur Foundation chairs at UC Merced.

Two MacArthur Foundation Chairs Awarded to Female SSHA Faculty

Two female faculty members of UC Merced’s School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts (SSHA) have been named the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation chairs, making four prestigious...

Researchers Seek to Understand Messy Proteins that are Critical to Cellular Function

Biophysical chemistry Professor Shahar Sukenik and the graduate students in his lab are trying to make sense out of what might seem to some to be chaos. They aim to better understand how a series of...

California deemed agriculture an essential business amid the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning many farm workers have worked during the harvest season under unusual and stressful conditions.

Public Health Professors Study COVID-19 Impact on Rural, Latinx Health

The coronavirus has impacted everyone in different ways and three public health professors are examining specifically how rural, Latinx communities in California have been affected in a new study...

ACTIVATE Bringing Telehealth Services to Vulnerable Merced County Residents

Researchers at the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and the Banatao Institute at the University of California have launched a new public-private pilot...

Public Health Ph.D. Student Wins CCAPW Scholarship

Shaina Santa Cruz, a graduate student in the Public Health Graduate Program, was awarded the Central California Asian Pacific Women (CCAPW) scholarship. The scholarship provides financial...

Low-Wage Work Is Linked to Spread of COVID-19, Study Finds

California counties with high numbers of low-wage workers are seeing higher incidence of COVID-19, suggesting a link between so-called “worker distress” and spread of the virus, according...

UC Merced Part of CITRIS’s COVID-19 Rapid Response Grants

UC Merced professors are leading or participating in four technology projects designed to mitigate the COVID-19 crisis. The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (...