M. Aaron Guest, PhD, MPH, MSW is a socio-environmental gerontologist and Assistant Professor of Aging in the Center for Innovation in Healthy and Resilient Aging at the Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation at Arizona State University.
He is an interdisciplinary trained social-environmental gerontologist interested in the predominant social and environmental domains an individual exists in and how this knowledge can lead to new understandings of health. His work pulls from a diverse, theoretically rich background, including training in public health, with an emphasis on health promotion, social work, with a focus on macro-level policy and community change, health communication, dissemination and implementation science, social network analysis, sociology, and geospatial approaches to understanding health. Through this work, he seeks to develop novel, tailored health interventions that can be utilized to increase the diffusion and translation of health innovations and thus increase access and utilization of critical health programs and services for older adults and their families. In short, he aims to create the optimal person-environment fit for the most advantageous health benefits for individuals as they age.
The scope of his research can be grouped into two overarching themes: Interventions for Decreasing Health Inequities and Improving Health Equity in Aging and Aging in the Social & Built Environments. The thematic connection between these domains is a commitment to, and interest in, the social and built environments in which individuals age – and the development of understandings of the ideal person and environment fit from this knowledge.
In addition to these roles, he serves as the Chair of the Age-Friendly University Global Network Secretariat, based at Arizona State University.
David R. Buys, PhD, MSPH, CPH, FGSA is the State Health Specialist for the Mississippi State University (MSU) Extension Service and Associate Professor in the Department of Food Science, Nutrition, and Health Promotion at MSU. As a researcher, he examines how food security and nutritional status affects older adults’ health-related outcomes; he has a substantial interest in the role of home and community-based services, including meals on wheels on older adults well-being. He has published nearly 40 peer-reviewed articles, including in such journals as Public Health Nutrition; the American Journal of Public Health; Journals of Gerontology: Medical Sciences; the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics; and the Journal of Nutrition in Gerontology and Geriatrics. In his role as State Health Specialist for the Extension Service, Dr. Buys provides research-based health-related resources to Extension Agents in each of Mississippi’s 82 Counties with a particular focus on the creating healthy home environments, prevention and management of chronic diseases, and substance use prevention and farm stress management among rural populations. Dr. Buys maintains an adjunct appointment in the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine’s Division of Gerontology, Geriatrics, and Palliative Medicine where he previously served on faculty. He has formal training in medical sociology, health services research, and epidemiology from Mississippi College, Auburn University, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham; he is Certified in Public Health by the National Board of Public Health Examiners and is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.
