Addam Reynolds

Addam is currently a postdoctoral scholar of the University of Southern California Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. Addam graduated with his PhD in social work from Rutgers University, after completing both his undergraduate education in biological science and earning his MSW from Rutgers. Broadly, Addam is a social gerontologist whose scholarship examines the role of exposures to inequalities throughout the life course and its implications to health in older adulthood. More specifically, Addam’s work has demonstrated that larger social structures, such as racism and economic stratification, underlie associations between early life circumstances and cognitive aging in the United States. Currently, Addam is working on projects that include examining how biological aging is accelerated among those that receive nursing home or home health care, if adult children’s educational attainment is associated with own biological and epigenetic aging, and if sexual and gender minorities have elevated risk factors for cognitive impairment.

Addam’s dissertation was entitled, The role of social contexts in associations between early life circumstances and cognitive aging: A work towards aging equity. Briefly, his dissertation explored the role of social stratification in underlying associations between risk/protective factors and cognitive aging. Addam’s dissertation demonstrated that the role of early life contexts in cognitive aging is conditional on multiple social positions. In addition to Addam’s dissertation experience, Addam has published a total of 13 manuscripts, six of which have been first authored, which have appeared in high impact gerontology journals such as Innovation in Aging and the Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological and Social Sciences. Addam is a passionate and experienced educator, having taught the laboratory section of the advanced statistics sequence in the PhD program and research methods in the MSW program at Rutgers University.