Skip to main content
[Curriculum]
Home

Thesis Overview

The M.S. degree is an academic degree in Health and Medical Sciences and requires writing a research thesis. Thus, the M.S. portion of the JMP offers students the opportunity to do academic research while in medical school. The topic must be health-related and the research supported by a coherent and scholarly program of study approved by the Master’s Faculty.

A major benefit of the Master’s program is the opportunity to work closely with faculty from the academic departments at UC Berkeley and UCSF. Students work closely with thesis advisors to develop and refine the research topic and work out an appropriate schedule of seminars and courses. Courses in research methodology are required.

Topics for the Master of Science in Health and Medical Sciences reflect the wide interests of our students and faculty, and fulfill the goal of training physicians who can think creatively. Students have contributed to scholarship in their area of interest through studies that explore questions through diverse lenses, including epidemiological, ethical, policy, economic, historical, anthropological, artistic, clinical, and scientific aspects of human health and disease.

Master's Thesis Titles: 2006 - 2010

2010 Masters Thesis Titles

  • 23 Going on 83: The Evaluation of a Model Retirement Community that Trains Gerontology Students in a Residential Program
  • Access to Arsenic-Free Water in Rural Bangladesh: An Assessment of Potential Acceptability of the ARUBA System
    view summary »
  • Community Ambassadors: A Community-Driven Approach to Resource Access for Elders
    view summary »
  • Correlates of Concurrent Partnerships in Mozambique
    view summary »
  • Distributions of Cytology and Human Papillomavirus DNA Test Results in Women with High-Grade Cervical Disease at Kaiser Permanente Northern California
  • Free Drugs, Free Clinics: Samples and the Free Clinic Movement, 1967-1976
    view summary »
  • Influenza and Pneumococcal Immunization Coverage in American Indians and Alaska Natives
  • Nearsighted Pharmacogenetics: How are Pharmaceutical Companies Compromising the Safety of Ethnic and Ancestral Groups in the United States?
  • Public Health Media Campaigns Targeted towards Asian American Populations
  • Relationships between Social Integration and Mortality: An Analysis of a National Sample Using the NHANES III
  • Release from Prison — Examining the High Risk of Death Among Former Prisoners
  • Religiosity, Spirituality, and Prenatal Depression in Southern Appalachia
  • Residential Segregation and Violent Injury in Oakland, California
    view summary »
  • The Role of Moral Intuition in the Ideological Debate about National Health Insurance
  • Treatment and Hospital-Based Prevention of Youth Interpersonal Violent Injury in San Francisco: A Cost Analysis

2009 Masters Thesis Titles

  • A Community Participatory Model for Chagas Disease Surveillance in Resource-Poor Settings
  • Are Stimulatory Sequences for TLR-9 Suppressed in Herpesvirus Genomes?
  • Beginning a Problem-Based Medical Curriculum: Does knowledge of personality type and learning style affect the student transition?
  • Beyond the Invisible Hand: Markets, Justice, and the Role of the US in Global Health Worker Migration
  • Centering Parenting: Examining group visits for moms and babies
  • Cerebrovascular disease and inflammatory factors in Sacramento Area Latinos
  • Changes in the Lives of Formerly Homeless Elders Living in Supportive Housing
  • FINDERS: FINding Diabetes in the EmeRgency Setting
  • Happiness in Transition: Vietnamese Concepts of Well-being
  • Oakland Asian Youth Envisioning Health Through Photovoice
  • Regulatory T cells: The link between allergies and glioma?
  • Striatal Dopamine Synthesis Capacity and the Catechol-OMethyltransferase Val (108/158) Met Polymorphism: Effect on Working Memory

2008 Masters Thesis Titles

  • A Decision in Search of a Story: A Narrative Approach to Understanding Patients’ Perceptions of Localized Prostate Cancer
  • Admixture Mapping Identified Pharmacogenetic Gene-Gene Interaction for Asthma
  • Can People Be Immunized Against Their Expectations? Understanding of HIV Vaccines Among Gay & Bisexual Men in the SF Bay Area
  • Community-Associated Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in Two Collegiate Crew Teams
  • Evaluating Health Outcomes for Microcredit Clients
  • Exposure to Secondhand Tobacco Smoke in Automobiles
  • Finding a Home: A Developmental Model of Rural Physician Recruitment and Retention
  • Growing Up Outside the Lines: Experiences of gender among FTM transgender youths
  • HIV Testing, Tuberculosis, and Stigma in Kampala, Uganda
  • Moral Values and Ideological Differences in Evidence-based Judgments on Adolescent Sex and Sex Education
  • Negotiating with Agency: Towards an Intersectional Understanding of Violence and Resilience in Young Southeast Asian Men
  • Nutritional Assessment of Rural Salvadorean Children in an Animal Gifting Program
  • The Night Commuters of Northern Uganda: A Population Based Cohort Study of Health, Shelter, and Security Amongst Displaced War-Affected Itinerant Children
  • The Pearls Regarding What is Necessary for a Hospital Administrator, by ‘Abd Al-Wậhid Al-Maghribi: English Translation, Analysis and Introduction
  • Treatment as Prevention: The transformation of stigma in Lwala, Kenya

2007 Masters Thesis Titles

  • Adolescent Attitudes toward and Experiences with the Vaginal Ring
  • From the Constitution to The Hospital: Universal Health Care in Thailand
  • Healthcare at the Crossroads: Health Experiences and Perceived Health Access Among Emancipated Foster Youth in Alameda County, California
  • Medical Prophecy in Critical Illness: Understanding Doubt Amongst Surrogate Decision-Makers in the Ability of Physicians to Accurately Prognosticate
  • Phthalates & Male Reproductive Health: Estimation of Daily Intake Doses in Pregnant Women from an Epidemiologic Study
  • Reuniting the ‘Disappeared’ Children of El Salvador with their Biological Families
  • Self Medication and Antibiotic Resistance in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  • The Effects of Contact Lenses and Hypoxia on the Upregulation of Surfactant Protein D by Corneal Epithelial Cells in Response to Pseudomonas aeruginosa
    view summary »
  • There is Such a Thing as Too Many Daughters, but Not Too Many Sons: The Intersection of Medical Technology, Son Preference, and Sex Selection Among South Asian Immigrants in the United States
  • Training Traditional Birth Attendants in Bangladesh: A New Model for Integration

2006 Masters Thesis Titles

  • Ask Your Doctor About…Prescription Drug Advertising, Patient Autonomy, and the Role of the FDA
  • Caregivers of Elders and the Caregiver Career: Predictors of Institutionalization and Caregiver Attrition
  • Child-Labor and Migration to Togo, West Africa: A Look into the Decision-Making Process
  • Differential Access to Health Insurance: Structural Barriers and their Ethical Implications
  • Elderly Chinese Residents' Mealtime Experiences in a Nursing Home
  • From Placebos to Meaning: Finding the Sentient Body
  • Help Me! and Leave Me Alone Pregnancy Experiences in Young Homeless Women in Berkeley
  • How the Lived Experience of Dialysis Patients Influences their Perspectives on Incentives for Organ Donation
  • Improving Food Access in Southwest Berkeley
  • Perspective of Latinos in East Oakland regarding the Benefits of Basic Computer Training and Barriers to Classroom Attendance
  • Self-Help Groups and Social Integration of People with Disabilities in Cambodia
  • The Trauma Story: A Qualitative and Quantitative Exploration of Iraqi Survivors’ Experiences

2005 Masters Thesis Titles

  • Picturing the Disease of the Tropics: Conventions of Clinical Photography and the Display of Race
    view summary »
Premium Drupal Themes by Adaptivethemes