M. Aaron Guest

Aaron Guest, PhD, MPH, MSW, is a socio-environmental gerontologist with training in public health and social work. He is an Assistant Professor within the Center for Innovation in Healthy and Resilient Aging at Arizona State University, where he teaches in the Master of Science in Aging. He received his Ph.D. in Gerontology from the Graduate Center for Gerontology at the University of Kentucky and his MPH and MSW from the University of South Carolina. His research focuses on understanding the influence of aging individuals’ ego-centric networks on health, identity, and social isolation and the development, implementation, and evaluation of tailored and scalable interventions from this understanding. He approaches his work as a community-engaged gerontological scholar, seeking to engage aging communities in increasing health equity and improving overall health outcomes associated with older age. Guided by a deep interest in the relationship between individuals and their environment, he is interested in the predominant social and environmental domains in which people age, live, work, play, and pray. Specifically, how understanding the multiple environmental contexts an individual is active in can lead to novel and tailored health innovations. His primary line of research focuses on the social experiences of marginalized aging individuals in rural environments and non-urban centers with a particular interest in working with sexual, racial, and gender minority groups to reduce isolation, health disparities, and inequalities. As an interdisciplinary trained gerontologist, he pulls from multiple disciplinary and theoretically rich backgrounds, such as public health, sociology, social work, and social network analysis, to develop novel health-oriented research for aging populations. His research aims to develop tailored community-based approaches that can increase the diffusion and translation of health innovations and thus increase access and utilization of critical health programs and services for older adults.

Guest has served in a series of progressive leadership roles within the American Society on Aging, the Gerontological Society of America, the National Association of Social Workers, and the Executive Board of the American Public Health Association. Originally from South Carolina, Dr. Guest lives in Phoenix, AZ, with his three cats.