Dr. Mariaelena Gonzalez is an Assistant Professor in Public Health at the University of California Merced in the fields of Social Epidemiology, Health Disparities, and Health Policy. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco from 2009 to 2013. She earned a PHD in sociology from Stanford University, a MTS from Harvard Divinity School, and holds a BS in Mathematics, and BA in Religious Studies from Santa Clara University.
Dr. Gonzalez is the co-Director of the Research Core for the UC Merced Nicotine and Cannabis Policy Center. In December, 2018, she was appointed to the California Tobacco Education Research Oversight Committee.
Dr. Gonzalez’s research areas include tobacco control, and understanding the unexpected risks and benefits of tobacco control policies, as well as the linkages between tobacco use and other risk behaviors. Dr. Gonzalez also studies the ways in which health behaviors, such as vaccinations and online health information seeking behaviors, differ between immigrants and their children. Along with Dr. Nancy Burke and a team of UC Merced students, she is working with the Madera County Department of Public Health, the Merced County Department of Public Health, and Stanislaus County Health Services Agency to assess oral health needs in the region. Dr. Gonzalez’s previous research has examined scientific and medical occupational pipelines, the passage of smokefree laws in the United States, as well as the passage of smokefree laws in the Netherlands.
Her Google Scholar Page can be found here- https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3vjs4PgAAAAJ&hl=en
