Marc A. Garcia is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs at Syracuse University. Garcia’s research is organized around three interrelated themes that seek to explain health disparities across the life course in the United States. The first theme focuses on socioeconomic, behavioral, and environmental factors that create cognitive health and mortality disparities between older racial/ethnic and immigrant groups. The second theme examines how sociocultural and contextual factors associated with nativity status, age of migration, and country of origin contribute to disparities in health and well-being among older Latino adults. The third examines the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on older Black and Latino adults. Within these lines of inquiry, he integrates life course and intersectionality perspectives, along with conceptual frameworks such as cumulative (dis)advantage theory, fundamental cause theory, and the stress paradigm, to contextualize how different axes of stratification in the U.S. shape the health and well-being of older adults.

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 associate editor for the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences and as an editorial board member for Research on Aging.

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.