Mara Getz Sheftel

Mara Getz Sheftel is an Instructor (Tenure Track) at Rutgers University, jointly affiliated with the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research and the School of Public Health. She serves on the scientific leadership teams of the New Jersey Population Health Cohort Study (NJHealth) and the Center for State Health Policy (CSHP). She earned her PhD in Sociology from the CUNY Graduate Center and previously worked as a Postdoctoral Scholar at Pennsylvania State University's Population Research Institute, where she contributed to the Crossnational Aging Research Lab (CARL).

Her research employs life course and health disparities frameworks to examine:

• International migration's impact on health stratification among aging immigrants
• Labor market precarity and occupational segregation effects on older adult health disparities
• Changing family structures and kinship erosion influencing loneliness and health outcomes

Her interdisciplinary work spans sociology, demography, public health, and policy.

Publications primarily focus on aging, migration, health disparities, and social determinants of well-being, using multinational datasets to analyze trends across vulnerable populations. Research themes consistently emphasize policy implications for improving population health.

She maintains continuous NIH research funding since 2021 and leads collaborative initiatives at NJHealth and CSHP. She previously contributed to the Crossnational Aging Research Lab at Penn State.