Health Sciences Research Institute
With more than 70 faculty members across UC Merced's three schools, the Health Sciences Research Institute is fostering world-renowned researchers through its work to improve the health of the people in the San Joaquin Valley and beyond.
San Joaquin Valley regional health issues include asthma, valley fever (coccidioidomycosis), obesity, diabetes, cancer, hypertension, heart disease, risky teen behaviors, teen tobacco use, sexually transmitted diseases, hepatitis and many others.
The opportunities to address the growing and complex health issues of the San Joaquin Valley and beyond require inter- and multidisciplinary teams.
Institute members are also engaged in evaluation and effectiveness research, and public health systems and services research.
HSRI research covers the range of health and medical research, and is organized into nine research clusters:
Research topics include cancer; diabetes; valley fever; genes and genomes; bacterial antibiotic resistance; risk-taking behaviors; contraceptive use and alcohol/drug use; income inequality and stroke incidence; the burden of disease and access to services for elderly and people with chronic conditions; developing health communications; environmental health and its economic impacts; engineering solutions to help people with lung conditions breathe better; the hepatitis C virus; health psychology; learning disabilities and disorders; health policy; biohazard detection and food safety; autoimmune diseases and immunology; neuroscience; computational biology and applied mathematics to help solve biomedical challenges; and much more.
The hallmarks of HSRI include research collaborations and extensive communication and interaction among researchers and with the community.
