Gerald R. Nowak III
Gerald R. Nowak III is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at Michigan State University, where he studies how social conditions shape health across the life course. He expects to defend in April 2027. His dissertation uses the National Health and Aging Trends Study to trace the long-term consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for older adults' mental health, physical health, and health behavior. He earned his M.A. (2019) and B.A. (2017) in Sociology from Wayne State University.
Gerald has published ten peer-reviewed articles in outlets including Journal of Applied Gerontology, Aging & Mental Health, Population Research and Policy Review, Sociological Perspectives, and Psychiatric Quarterly, and is first author of a peer-reviewed book chapter on health and partnerships in the Research Handbook on Partnering across the Life Course (Edward Elgar). That work spans later-life mental health and social connection, vaccine uptake, the ethics and accessibility of psychiatric treatment, and racial discrimination in the workplace. He works primarily with complex national survey data, including NHATS, the National Survey of Family Growth, and Add Health, applying survey-weighted models with replicate-weight variance estimation in Stata and SPSS. His broader methodological portfolio spans survey experiments, systematic review and critical appraisal, and qualitative interviewing.
A second line of research examines sexual and reproductive health and HPV vaccination from adolescence into young adulthood. As a research assistant at the MSU College of Nursing under Dr. Angela Chia-Chen Chen, Gerald contributes to the HPV Vaccine Game study, conducts systematic reviews of HPV self-sampling and vaccine trials, and leads an NSFG analysis of healthcare access, STI testing, and HPV vaccine initiation that he will present at the 2026 American Public Health Association Annual Meeting.
He has coordinated two federally funded studies, an NIA-funded R01 on aging and health and an NIH BRAIN Initiative project on the bioethics of psychiatric electrical interventions, with responsibility for budgets, IRB protocols, participant recruitment, and manuscript preparation. He has served as instructor of record for Health and Society and Youth and Society, and as graduate lab instructor for the department's two-course graduate statistics sequence.
Gerald is seeking postdoctoral and research associate positions in public health research. He is open to appointments in sociology, public health, nursing, medicine, and interdisciplinary health and aging centers. He can be reached at nowakge2@msu.edu.