Tashelle Wright, a rising fourth-year doctoral student in Public Health at UC Merced, has been awarded a Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) Predoctoral Fellowship. This fellowship offers two years of research funding and is intended to support her dissertation project “Intersecting Inequities: Linking tobacco use to oral health disparities among Blacks and Latinx”. As a TRDRP Fellow, Tashelle will have the opportunity to focus on her research, advanced training, and continued professional development. Tashelle’s research interests focus on health equity in Black and Latinx communities and both community-based and community-driven research. Tashelle will be presenting her research at this year’s American Public Health Association (APHA) Conference in Philadelphia, PA.
During the TRDRP Fellowship period, Tashelle will continue research examining tobacco use and oral health diseases among Black, Latinx, aging and rural populations in the San Joaquin Valley, under the mentorship of her Dissertation Chair, Dr. Nancy Burke and Dissertation Committee Members, Dr. Mariaelena Gonzalez and Dr. Irene Yen. All three faculty members are part of the Core Research Team at UC Merced’s Nicotine & Cannabis Policy Center (NCPC).
