Mariaelena Gonzalez

Dr. 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. Her current research focuses on health disparities, including oral health disparities, and the ways in which social and environmental factors affect health risk behaviors. 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 differ between first, second, and third generation Latinos. 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.