Researcher profile

Sara Schneider

Sara Schneider, PhD, MS, is a cognitive scientist by training and a postdoctoral scholar at the UC Merced Nicotine and Cannabis Policy Center (NCPC). Her current research focuses on investigating community- and policy-level factors related to tobacco and cannabis use and cessation through community-engaged research in the San Joaquin Valley (SJV). Her work applies a community-engaged and mixed-methods approach to addressing tobacco-related inequities in rural communities like the SJV. As part of a funded Tobacco-Related Disease Research (TRDRP) study (MPIs: Dr. Dorie Apollonio, UC San Francisco; Dr. Anna Song, UC Merced, TRDRP #T33IR6471), she conducted a quantitative survey with San Joaquin Valley community members, and also conducted qualitative interviews with SJV pharmacists to understand their knowledge, attitudes, and experiences with pharmacist-furnished nicotine therapy replacement (NRT). She has also written on the health consequences of cannabis for youth and has conducted tobacco product waste surveying with youth in collaboration with Orange County's Tobacco-Use Prevention Education (TUPE) program. With a multidisciplinary background, she earned her PhD and MS in Cognitive and Information Sciences from UC Merced, where she investigated speech structure (i.e., hierarchical temporal structure) and the alignment of levels of speech between speakers (i.e., complexity matching) in the contexts of infant vocalization development, joint task performance, and Spanish-English bilingual conversations. Displaying a strong commitment to pedagogy, she has mentored 23 undergraduate UC Merced students and received UC Merced’s Outstanding Teaching Award in 2018 for her efforts. Her long-term goals are to reduce health disparities relating to tobacco and cannabis in the SJV and other rural regions, while continuing to mentor students in their academic and professional development.