Marc A. Garcia

Marc A. Garcia (he/him) is a tenure-track assistant professor in the Sociology Department in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. At Syracuse University, Garcia teaches classes in Minority Aging and Health including, Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Health and Healthcare. 

Prior to joining Syracuse University, Garcia was an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln from 2018-21 where he taught Physical Health Disparities and Sociology of Health Care and Health Professions.

Garcia’s research is organized around two interrelated themes that seek to explain health disparities across the life course in the United States and Mexico to better inform the development of actionable and culturally appropriate health policies. The first focuses on physical and cognitive health disparities among older racial/ethnic and immigrant adults. The second explores longevity and mortality outcomes among older Latinx subgroups. His work has been instrumental in highlighting the heterogeneity among older Latinxs by furthering our understanding of how nativity, country of origin and immigration experiences intersect with gender to create unique trajectories of functional and cognitive impairment for foreign-born people who migrate to the United States in late life.

Recently published work includes “Educational Benefits and Cognitive Health Life Expectancies: Racial/Ethnic, Nativity, and Gender Disparities” in The Gerontologist and “The Color of Covid-19: Structural Racism and the Disproportionate Impact of the Pandemic on Older Black and Latinx Adults” in The Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences.

Past research has been supported by the National Institutes of Aging (NIA) pilot funding from the Michigan Center for Contextual Factors in Alzheimer’s Disease (MCCFAD) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and by the National Science Foundation through the Social Science Extreme Events Research (SSEER) Network and the CONVERGE facility housed at the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. 

In 2021, Garcia was awarded the Harold & Esther Edgerton Junior Faculty Award by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, a highly prestigious University award for an outstanding junior faculty member who has demonstrated creative research, extraordinary teaching abilities, and academic promise. 

Professor Garcia is a member of the American Sociological Association, Gerontological Society of America, Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science, and Population Association of America. He currently serves as an editorial board member for the Journal of Health and Social Behavior and the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, and associate editor for the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. 

Garcia earned a Ph.D. in 2015, from the University of Texas-Austin, an M.S. in 2011 from Texas A&M University, and a B.A. in 2008, from the University of Texas-Pan American University. 

Selected Publications (2020-2021)

COVID-19

Garcia, Marc A., Patricia A Homan, Catherine García and Tyson H Brown. 2021. "The Color of COVID-19: Structural Racism and the Pandemic’s Disproportionate Impact on Older Black and Latinx Adults." The Journals of Gerontology: Series B. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbaa114.

Sáenz, Rogelio and Marc A. Garcia. 2021. "The Disproportionate Impact of COVID-19 on Older Latino Mortality: The Rapidly Diminishing Latino Paradox." The Journals of Gerontology: Series B. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbaa158.

Garcia, Marc A., Adriana M. Reyes and Catherine García. 2021. "The COVID-19 Pandemic and Precarious Aging: The Importance of an Equity Response." Generations. 45 (2), 20-27.

García, Catherine, Fernando I. Rivera, Marc A. Garcia, Giovani Burgos, and Maria P. Aranda. 2021.  "Contextualizing the COVID-19 Era in Puerto Rico: Compounding Disasters and Parallel Pandemics." The Journals of Gerontology: Series B. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbaa186.

Gauthier, G Robin, Jeffrey A Smith, Catherine García, Marc A. Garcia and Patricia A Thomas. 2021. "Exacerbating Inequalities: Social Networks, Racial/Ethnic Disparities, and the Covid-19 Pandemic." The Journals of Gerontology: Series B. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbaa117.

Cognition

Garcia, Marc A., David F. Warner, Catherine Garcia, Brian Downer, and Mukaila Raji. 2021. “Age Patterns in Self-Reported Cognitive Impairment among Older Latino Subgroups and Non-Latino Whites in the U.S., 1997 to 2018: Implications for Public Health Policy, Innovation in Aging. https://doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igab039. 

Garcia, Marc A., Brian Downer, Chi-Tsun Chiu, Joseph L Saenz, Kasim Ortiz and Rebeca Wong. 2021. "Educational Benefits and Cognitive Health Life Expectancies: Racial/Ethnic, Nativity, and Gender Disparities." The Gerontologist. doi: 10.1093/geront/gnaa112.

Garcia, Marc A., and Philip A. Cantu. "Cognitive Health and Psychological Well-Being among Latinx Older Adults in the United States and Mexico, The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 2021. gbab069. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbab069. 

Garcia, Marc A., Joseph L. Saenz, Chi-Tsun Chiu, Brian Downer, and Rebeca Wong. 2021. “Rural and Urban Differences in Cognitive Healthy Life Expectancies Among Older Adults in Mexico.” in J. L. Angel, M. L. Ortega, and L. M. Gutiérrez Robledo. (eds) Understanding the Context of Cognitive Aging: Mexico and the United States. Cham: Springer.

Mejia-Arango, Silvia, Jaqueline Avila, Brian Downer, Marc A. Garcia, Alejandra Michaels-Obregon, Joseph L. Sáenz, Rafael Samper-Ternent, Rebeca Wong. 2021. “Effect of Demographic and Health Dynamics on Cognitive Status in Mexico between 2001 and 2015: Evidence from the Mexican Health and Aging Study.” Geriatrics, 6(3), 63. https://doi.org/10.3390/geriatrics6030063.

Garcia, Marc A., Kasim Ortiz, Sandra P. Arévalo, Erica D. Diminich, Emily Briceño, Irving E. Vega and Wassim Tarraf. 2020. "Age of Migration and Cognitive Function among Older Latinos in the United States." Journal of Alzheimer's Disease 76:1493-511. doi: 10.3233/JAD-191296.

Ortiz, Kasim, Marc A. Garcia, Emily Briceño, Erica D. Diminich, Sandra P. Arévalo, Irving E. Vega and Wassim Tarraf. 2020. "Glycosylated Hemoglobin Level, Race/Ethnicity, and Cognition in Midlife and Early Old Age." Research in Human Development 17(1):20-40. doi: 10.1080/15427609.2020.1743810. 

Saenz, Joseph L., Marc A. Garcia and Brian Downer. 2020. "Late Life Depressive Symptoms and Cognitive Function among Older Mexican Adults: The Past and the Present." Aging & Mental Health 24(3):413-22. doi: 10.1080/13607863.2018.1544214.