1. Brief IntroductionI. Brief Introduction

Sunkanmi Folorunsho is a researcher inociologist of aging, health, and social inequality and health whose workresearch examines how social and economic conditionstructures shape mental health, cognition, healthcare access, and wellbeing in later lifeand care outcomes in later life, with sustained attention to African and African diaspora populations. He is a PhDdoctoral candidate in and instructor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where he works under the supervision of Professor Lisa Kort-Butler and serves as an Instructor of Record and Graduate Teaching Assistant, and he also holds an affiliation with University of Ilorin, Nigeria.

His research draws from gerontology, medical sociology, public health, mental health research, and the study of racial andcholarship is deliberately interdisciplinary, drawing on socioeconomic inequality, with particular attention to older adults, Black populationslogy, public health, gerontology, and African and African diadiaspora communitistudies.

Muc This of Folorunsho's research begins withrientation reflects a conviction that the questions that appear individual but are rooted in wider social conditionsmatter most in the study of aging cannot be answered from within a single discipline. Why do some older adults disengagewithdraw from routine medical care even when they continue to have health needs? How do wealth and, why financial insecurity affect mental health in later life? Why do cognitive outcomes differ across racial and socioeconomic groups? What happens when older adults have limited family, financial, or community resources to rely on? These questions guide a research program concerned not only with whether inequalities exist, but also with how they are produced and sustained across the life course.

Hisregisters as depression decades later, and why cognitive decline follows the contours academic training provides a strong methodological foundation for this work. His master's thesis examined household wealth and mental health among older adults across racial and ethnic groups, with particular attention to the role of social support. His methodological experience includes longitudinal and multilevel modeling, survey analysis, regression methods, structural equation modelingf social disadvantage are all questions that cut across sociology, medicine, and reproducible quantitative research using Stata, SPSS, Mplus, R, and SQL. He is also pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Mixed Methods Research. His current publication record includes 22 peer reviewed journal articles covering healthcare disengagement, cognitive health, depressive symptoms, social support, multimorbidity, obesity, hospice utilization, disability, HIV and aging, dementia stigma, elder abuse, oral health, healthcare affordability, and other dimensions of health and aging.

An impopolicy at once. To date he has authored or co-authored approximately twenty-five peer-reviewed publications, which have accumulated more than two hundrtant feature of Folorunsho's scholarship is its attention to populationd citations and settings that remain underrepresented in much of the aging and health an h-index of eight.

Aliterature. Hiongs research includes older adults in the United States, older Black Americans, Nigerian populations, African immigrants, and populations across Sub Saharan Africa. Working across these settings allows him to examine how aging is shaped by race, wealth, family resources, healthcare systems, social relationships, culture, and place. It also allows him to ask whether explanations developed from one population or healthcare system can be assumed to apply equally well elsewhere.

Teachide his research, Folorunsho teaches undergraduate sociology fully onling and mentorship are also central to his academic work. At the at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Folorunsho has designed and taught Families and Societyserving and Health, Medicine, and Society as Iinstructor of Record. His teaching connects sociological ideas with everyday questions about family life, herecord for Families and Society (SOCI 226) and Health, medicine, inequality, and social institutions. He also mentors high school and undergraduate students through the Illinois Science and Technology Coalition Mentorship Program and was recognized as Mentor of the Month in 2025.

FolorunMedicine and Society (SOCI 252). He is an active contributor to the scholarly infrastructure of hisho contributes actively to academic service and scientific collaboration. He has completedfields, having served as a peer reviewer for more than 50 verified peer reviews for forty journals across aging, public health, mental health, sociology, and related fields. He serves as a , holding a Reviewing Editor with the role with Springer Nature Reviewer Community , and participatesing in the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation Global Burden of Disease Collaborator Network. His academic work therefore extends across research, teaching, mentorship, peer review, and collaborative scientific activity.

2. Story of Notable ContributionsII. Story about Notable Contributions

Folorunsho'’s research is driven by a continuing interest in how unequal social conditions become unequal health outcomes. His work does not assume that poor health, psychological distress, cognitive difficulties, or limited healthcare use can be adequately explained by individual behavior. Instead, he examines the economic, social, racial, relational, and institutional conditions that shape what people experience before these outcomes become visible.

This peprogram developed along two converging tracks. The first is theoretical. His framework of Ecologies of Exposurspective is especially clear in his Ecologies of Exposure and Resistance framework and Resistance, published in Theory & Psychology. The framework addresses a tension in research on marginalized populations. Communities experiencing social disadvantage are often studied primarily through their exposure to poverty, discrimination, environmental hazards, inadequate healthcare, and other forms of structural inequality. Research on resilience, by contrast, may focus strongly on how people cope with adversity without giving equal attention to why some groups are repeatedly required to cope with greater adversity in the first place. Folorunsho's framework brings these concerns into the same conversation by examining both exposureory & Psychology, offered a way of holding together two facts that are often treated separately: that marginalized populations are disproportionately exposed to structural harm, and the resources people use to respond to it.

Tat thisey approach avoids reducing marginalized populations to vulnerability while also avoiding an overly celebratory view of resilience. Families, communities, social relationships, cultural resources, and personal strengths can help people navigate difficult circumstances, but the ability to cope does not make unequal conditions less importantsimultaneously generate resources of resistance that shape how that harm is metabolized. The framework therefore encourages researchers to study both the production of disadvantage and the resources through which people respond to it.

His has since informed how he approaches empirical work on hquealthcare disengagement reflects this same interest. In the Journal of Aging and Health, Fstiolorunsho and Darlingtina Esiaka examine why older adults disengage from routine medical care. Rather than treating missed care simply as a matter of poor compliance or lack of personal responsibility, t about disadvantage and later-life wellbeing.

The study considers psychological distress and wealth stratification as part of the explanation. The question becomes not simply why an older adult failed to attend care, but what social and psychological circumstances may have made continued engagement with healthcare more difficult.

His research cond track is empirical and quantitative, built largely on large lon cognitive health among Black Americans follows a similar path. In the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, Folorunsho and itudinal datasets incolleagues examined resilience, grit, and subjective cognitive decline among middle to older aged Black Americans. The study found that resilience and grit did not operate in the same way. Resilience appeared protective, while grit intensified subjective cognitive decline. This finding complicates the common assumption that characteristics associated with perseverance are always beneficial. It raises a more careful question about what persistence means when people are navigating prolonged social, economic, or health related strain.

His uding the Health and Retirement Study. Working with these data, he has investigated why older adults disengage from routine medical care; how distancollaborative work published ivision Alzheimer's & Dementia eximpamines social engagement in relation to cognitive functioning, depressive symptoms, and restless sleep among older Black adults. Here, crment predicts trajectories of cognition is studied within the social and emotional environmve decline independent of later life rather than as an isolated neurological process. Social connection, sleep, emotional wellbeing, and cognitive functioning can intersect in ways that become particularly important when studying populations whose experiences of aging have also been shaped by racial and socioeconomic inequality.

Economdepressive symptoms, using multic inequality is another recurring concern in Folorunsho's scholarship. His graduate research on household wealth and mental health reflects an interest in resources accumulated across the life course. Wealth can capture years of employment opportunity, home ownership, savings, debt, inheritance, discrimination, and access to institutions in ways that current income cannot fully represent. This is particularly important in later life, when accumulated resources often determine how comfortably people can respond to illness, disability, retirement, caregiving needs, and unexpected financial shocks.

Aevel growth curve models; how wealth shocks push retirees back into the labor force; and how substantial part of his research also examines aging and health among African and African diaspora populations. His publications address aging with HIV in Nigeria, social determinants of multimorbidity among older adults in Sub Saharan Africa, poverty and healthcare affordability, access to dental care among older adults, dementia stigma among Nigerian men, and the role of formal social networks in reducing mental stress among older adults living in poverty. These studies address health problems that are often examined through clinical measures while giving greater attention to the social environments in which those problems are experienced.

Hisrientations toward the financial future shape depressive trajectories in later life. A parallel body of review scholarship extends the structural argument work on masculinity and memory loss provides a good example. Dementia is a neurological condition, but the experience of memory loss is also shaped by how families and communities understand independence, competence, masculinity, aging, and utward, examining climate grief as a social status. By examining dementia stigma among Nigerian men, the research shows why cultural expectations matter for understanding how symptoms are interpreted, disclosed, and managed.

Folorundeterminant of mental health, urban heat islandsho has also extended this interest in inequality and healthcare access to women's health. His qualitative systematic review inand nature-based responses to them, rural residency Ethnicity & Health examines deteurminants of cervical cancer screening among African and African American women. Related work considers disparities in cervical cancer research involving African immigrant women in the United States. These studies ask why preventive services remain unevenly used and why some populations remain less visible in the research literature despite carrying important health needsing post-COVID-19 recovery, and the displacement of residents through neighbourhood revitalisation.

HThis research has receivedwork has been recognition through several awards and fellowshipsized institutionally. In 2026, he received the Graduate Student Prize for Scholarly Work from the African and African American Studies Program in the Institute for Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He received the Dan Hoyt Graduate Student Publication Award in both 2025 and 2026 and the A, the Alice Frosh Howard Graduate Student Research Fellowship in 2026. His other honors include the Nicholas Babchuk , and the Dan Hoyt Graduate Student Research Award, the David C. and Marilyn S. Moore Quantitative Research Publication Award, the Scott C. Whiteford Graduate Student Award, and an ICPSR scholarship for advanced training in multilevel and longitudinal modelingwhich he had also received in 2025.

3. Principal Publications and WorksIII. Principal Publications and Works

Folorunsho's scholarshHip includes theoretical work, quantitative population research, qualitative research, systematic reviews, and evidence synthesis. Selected publications include:

1. Ecologies of Exposure and Resistance: A Novel Framework for Understanding Health Inequalities in Marginalized Communities. Theory & Psychology.

2. Why Do Older Adults Disengage from Routine Medical Care? Psychological Distress, Wealth Stratification, and Health System Disengagement in Later Life. Journal of Aging and Health.

3. Resilience Shields and Grit Intensifies Subjective Cognitive Decline in Middle to Older Aged Black Americans. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

4. Social Engagement Moderates the Relationship Between Cognitive Functioning, Depressive Symptoms, and Restless Sleep in Older Black Adults. Alzheimer's & Dementia.

5. Immersive Virtual Reality to Promote Mental Health in Older Adults: A Systematic Review. Clinical Gerontologist.

6. Racial and Socioeconomic Disparities in Hospice Utilization Among Older Adults in the United States. American Journal of Hospice & Palliative Care.

7. Masculinity and Mental Health in Later Life in Sub Saharan Africa: A Review of Recent Literature. Sociology Compass.

8. Functional Impairment Without Depression Diagnosis as an Indicator of Psychological Distress in Older Adults. Cambridge Prisms: Global Mental Health.

9. Household Income and Obesity Among Older Adults: The Moderating Role of Race in a Longitudinal Analysis. BMC Public Health.

10. Social Determinants of Multimorbidity in Older Adults in Sub Saharan Africa: A Systematic Review. Palliative & Supportive Care.

11. Aging With HIV in Nigeria: A Narrative Review of Multimorbidity and Healthcare Access Challenges. Health Science Reports.

12. Masculinity and Memory Loss: A Qualitative Study of the Social Stigma of Dementia Among Nigerian Men. Aging & Mental Health.

13. The Role of Formal Social Networks in Mitigating Age Related Mental Stress Among Older Nigerians Living in Poverty: Insights from Social Capital Theory. Global Mental Health.

14. The Impact of Neglect, Physical, and Financial Abuse on Mental Health Among Older Adults: A Systematic Review. Aging & Mental Health.

15. The Role of Social Determinants of Health in Shaping Racial and Disability Disparities Among Older Adults in the United States. Journal of Aging & Social Policy.

16. Determinants of Cervical Cancer Screening Among African and African American Women: A Qualitative Systematic Review. Ethnicity & Health.

Hiscontribution, Ecologies of Exposure and Resistance, currappent research includes work on social disconnection and health, aging without family support, perceived survival expectations and health behavior, and the relationship between neighborhood conditions, social cohesion, sleep, and cognitive functioning.

4. Implications for the Sciences

Folorunsared in Theory & Psychology and represents his most conceptually ambitious work. Among his empirical publications, a 2026 article in tho'se work encourages researchers to look beyond the individual when explaining hJournal of Aging and Health and aging. Osks why older adults make choices about healthdisengage from routine medical care, finances, relationships, and daily life, but those choices are made within very differenttreating disengagement as a patterned social circumstances. Wealth affects the range of options available to people. Raceprocess rather than individual noncompliance.

His collan influence exposure to discrimination and the treatment people receive within institutions. Family structure affects whether someone has help during illness or disability. Neighborhood conditions influence mobility, stress, safety, and access to resources. Healthcare systems affect whether care is affordable, accessible, continuous, and easy to navigate.

This borative work spans mental health intervention, cognition, and global health disparities. A systematic review in Clinical Gerontologist assessed immersive virtual reality as a means of perspective changes how familiaromoting mental health problems can be understood. Anamong older adult who stops attending routine medical appointments may be described as noncompliant, but that explanation tells us little about whether the person is experiencing financial hardship, psychological distress, transportation problems, mobility limitations, mistrust, or difficulty navigating the healthcare system. A person experiencing depression following financial loss may appear unable to cope, but the financial loss may sit on top of decades of unequal opportunities to accumulate savings, housing wealth, retirement benefits, and other resources. Cs. In the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, he and colleagues examined how resilience shields against, while grit intensifies, subjective cognitive decline can be described clinically, but clinical description alone does not explain why some groups reach later life with greater exposure to chronic stress, illness, economic disadvantage, or limited access to quality care.

Folorunamong middle-to-older aged Black Americans, a finding that complicatesho's research therefore pushes inquiry further back in the chain of events. What happened before someone disengaged from healthcare? What conditions shaped the financial resources available when illness occurred? What relationships were available before a person became socially isolated? What kinds of support existed when a family began caring for an older relative? How did earlier experiences with work, race, poverty, healthcare, and community life affect the resources available in old age? These questions help move research from describing inequalities to understanding how they develop.

His work the assumption that all psychological strengths protect equally. A qualitative systematic review in Ethnicity & Health examined determinants of cervical cancer screening acrmoss the United States, Black Ameng African populations, Nigeria, and African immigrants, and Sub Saharan Africa is also relevant to the development of gerontology and public health. Much of the evidence used to understand aging has historically come from high income Western populationsAmerican women, extending his diaspora-focused agenda into cancer prevention.

IV. Implications for the Sciences

That evidence remains essential, but aging does not occur under the same social conditions everywhere. Family responsibilities, healthcare systems, social protection, gender expectations, economic security, cultural beliefs, and access to formal care vary widely across societies.

Resea through-line of Folorunsho’s work is a refusal to locate the causes of laterch across d-lifferent settings can therefore reveal where existing theories work well and where they require greater attention to context. Social support may have different consequences when families carry most of the responsibility for elder care. The experience of dementia stigma may change when memory loss interacts with particular cultural expectations about masculinity, competence, or independence. Healthcare access means something different in a setting where most costs are protected by insurance than in one where families may have to finance a greater share of care themselves. These differences are not obstacles to comparison. They are part of what comparison can teach us.

Thfe disadvantage in the choices of older adults themselves. Disengagement from care, cognitive decline, and depressive trajectories are treated as outcomes of exposure to financisal approach also has clear implications for health policy. If disparities in later life are partly produced by differences in wealth, healthcare access, social relationships, neighborhood conditions, disprecarity, displacement, heat, and discrimination, and institutional support, thenrather than as failures of individual behavior change cannot be the only response. Health education is valuable, but its impact is limited when people cannot afford care or reach services. Encouraging older adults to remain socially engaged may have little effect when mobility difficulties, transportation problems, unsafe neighborhoods, or the loss of close relationships make engagement difficulmanagement. This reframing carries direct policy implications, since it relocates the point of intervention from patient behavior to the structures that pattern it.

Encoquraging people to become more resilient cannot substitute for addressing the conditions that repeatedly expose some populations to greater hardship.

The Ecologies of Exposure and Resistance frally significant is his insistence on studying aging compamework speaks directly to this problem. People do respond to hardship through family relationships, community support, personal strengths, social networks, cultural resourcesatively across the United States, continental Africa, and other forms of resistance. Those responses deserve serious attention. At the same time, resilience should not become a reason to overlook the structures that create unequal exposure to adversity. Studying both sides allows health research to recognize human agency without shifting responsibility for structural inequality onto the people most affected by it.

Fthe African diaspora. Gerontology has historically been built on data from high-income Western populations, and findings drawn from those populatiolorunsho's research on mental health, cognition, healthcare use, social engagement, poverty, disability, multimorbidity, and care therefore contributes to a broader understanding of aging as a social as well as a biological process. Differences observed in later life often have histories. They reflect resources accumulated or denied over many years, relationships strengthened or lost, institutions encountered, environments inhabited, and opportunities that were never equally distributed. Understanding those histories is essential for explaining why people who reach the same stage of life can experience aging in very different wayss are routinely generalized. By working across these contexts and collaborating with researchers based in Nigeria, Folorunsho contributes to a gerontology capable of distinguishing what is general about human aging from what is an artifact of where it happened to be studied.