Our Faculty
PUBLIC HEALTH
CORE FACULTY
Asa Bradman
Children's exposure to pesticides and other environmental chemicals; community exposures to air pollutants and noise; environmental exposures in agricultural communities; impacts of environmental exposures on children's health and development; STEM environmental literacy education for high school and middle school youth; pesticide use policy; organic agricultural policy; environmental health
Email: abradman@ucmerced.edu
PAUL BROWN
Health economics and health services research; behavioral health economics. Topics areas include: chronic disease prevention, tobacco and cannabis, return on investment and cost-effectiveness of public health interventions, and discreet choice experiments
Email: pbrown3@ucmerced.edu
NANCY BURKE
Global health; social inequalities in health/health disparities; health behavior; cancer and chronic illness; oral health; medical anthropology; clinical trials recruitment/research participation; refugees; survivorship; immigration; health literacy
Email: nburke2@ucmerced.edu
Alec Chan-Golston
Bayesian spatial statistics; finite population estimation; missing data; geographic health disparities; the food environment
Email: achan-golston@ucmerced.edu
RICARDO CISNEROS
Environmental exposure and health; air quality research and management; impacts of forest fires on air quality and health, ozone distribution and exposure in the Sierra Nevada region; environmental health
Email: rcisneros@ucmerced.edu
Lindsay Crawford
The impact of various health behaviors on cognitive outcomes. Public health pedagogy.
Email: lcrawford5@ucmerced.edu
maria-elena de trinidad young
Immigration policy; citizenship and legal status, national, state, and local policy; immigrant integration and criminalization; health care access; social determinants of health
Email: mariaelena@ucmerced.edu
KARINA DIAZ RIOS
Nutrition education; eating behavior change; cross-cultural adaptation of interventions; measurement validation; implementation science
Email: kdiazrios@ucmerced.edu
SIDRA GOLDMAN-MELLOR
Epidemiology of depression and suicidal behavior; maternal mental and behavioral health, psychosocial adversity and health; intersections between mental health and violence
Email: sgoldman-mellor@ucmerced.edu
mariaelena gonzalez
Health disparities; tobacco control; the effects of the environment on individual-level risk behaviors; generational disparities in risk and prevention behaviors among racial/ethnic minorities; oral health
Email: mgonzalez82@ucmerced.edu
SANDIE HA
Epidemiology; public health; perinatal health; neurodevelopment; maternal and child health; chronic diseases; environmental health
Email: sha55@ucmerced.edu
Thelma hurd
Health disparities; building community capacity to effect health equity among diverse, underserved populations; clinical oncology; breast disease in multicultural populations; medical education
Email: thurd2@ucmerced.edu
ANDREA JOYCE
Public health entomology, alternatives to pesticides, vector borne disease, population genetics, vector ecology, environmental health, healthy agricultural communities, integrated pest management
Email: ajoyce2@ucmerced.edu
A. SUSANA RAMIREZ
Media; inequality and public health; food and nutrition policy; health communication
Email: sramirez37@ucmerced.edu
IRENE YEN
Epidemiology, social determinants, public housing, educational attainment
Email: iyen@ucmerced.edu
AFFILIATED FACULTY
MIRIAM BARLOW
Bacteria; predicting the evolution of antibiotic resistance; testing evolutionary theory
Email: mbarlow@ucmerced.edu
LINDA CAMERON
Health communications and psychosocial interventions; cancer, heart disease, and diabetes; cognitive and emotional processes and self-regulation; theoretically-based interventions and refining psychological theory; development and evaluation of psychosocial support programs; techniques for stress management and smoking cessation; risk communications and tobacco use
Email: lcameron@ucmerced.edu
erin hestir
Aquatic ecosystems under threat from competing pressures to meet societal needs for water and food security while sustaining biodiversity and other ecosystem services; expertise in geospatial analytics, hyperspectral and satellite remote sensing, and sensor networks in inland and coastal waters and wetlands
Email: ehestir@ucmerced.edu
DAn Hicks
Public scientific controversies, especially related to environmental public health; environmental injustice; philosophy of science and ethics; science and technology studies (STS); data science and computational methods
Email: dhicks4@ucmerced.edu
Haiyan Liu
Social network analysis; Bayesian modeling; structural equation modeling; longitudinal data analysis; categorical data analysis; multilevel modeling; substantive applications of statistics in psychology and education
Email: hliu62@ucmerced.edu
Colleen Naughton
Design of sustainable and culturally sensitive Food-Energy-Water Systems for the underserved; wastewater monitoring
Email: cnaughton2@ucmerced.edu
WHITNEY PIRTLE
Race and racism, identity, health equity, and Black feminist praxis. Dr. Pirtle leads the Sociology of Health and Equity (SHE) Lab.
Email: wpirtle@ucmerced.edu
ANNA SONG
Adolescent and young adult decision-making and risk behaviors; tobacco use initiation, continuation, and cessation; risk factors for sex initiation; relationship between perceptions, attitudes, and risk behaviors; predictors of health-related perceptions and attitudes; risk communication efficacy; ethnic differences in risk behaviors
Email: asong5@ucmerced.edu
Zulema Valdez
The effect of social group formations (based on race, class, gender, nativity, etc.) on the social and economic life chances of American workers and entrepreneurs
Email: zvaldez@ucmerced.edu
Jan L. Wallander
Health psychology and developmental psychopathology; interactions between behavior and health in children and adolescents; effects of chronic disease or disability on quality of life in childhood; behavioral interventions to improve health and quality of life in children and adolescents
Email: jwallander@ucmerced.edu
DEBORAH WIEBE
Health and pediatric psychology; social support and developmental factors; coping with and managing chronic illnesses such as diabetes
Email: dwiebe@ucmerced.edu
Matthew Zawadzki
Stress and health; perseverative cognitions; non-pharmacological psychosocial interventions for health and well-being
Email: mzawadzki@ucmerced.edu