Jonathan (JD) Daw

Email: jddaw@psu.edu
Phone: (814) 753-1329
Office: 702 Oswald Tower, University Park Campus

Research:

I currently have two primary research projects on which I am principal investigator for NIH-funded R01 grants. In the first, begun in 2017, I am studying the social network determinants of individual differences and racial/ethnic disparities in living donor kidney transplantation. Although not a traditional subject of sociological study, this important topic fascinates me due to how processes that have long defined my research interests — health behaviors, family and social network structures and relationships, racial/ethnic and socioeconomic inequality, and the interplay of social and genetic factors in health processes — combine to structure inequality in a seemingly-unrelated, life-and-death outcome.

In my second primary project begun in 2022, I am principal investigator on an NIH-funded R01 grant studying the impact of structural racism on racial/ethnic disparities in end-stage kidney disease incidence, treatment trajectories, and outcomes. This work extends important methodological and theoretical developments pioneered by other study investigators to measure area-level differences in structural racism and their impact on health, and applies it to kidney kidney disease. It does so employing restricted secondary data linking National Health Interview Study respondents to kidney disease registry data and geospatial identifiers to model the impact of structural racism. Importantly, this project will be conducted and interpreted in regular consultation with community and patient advisory boards in Baltimore and Pittsburgh, in order to ensure that our approach and next steps are firmly aligned with the lived experience of these communities.

Previously, my research focused on gene-environment interplay in adolescent and young adult health behaviors, and the structure and social functions of U.S. extended kinship networks. I remain open to teaching, mentorship, and collaboration opportunities in these areas.

About Me:

I am an Associate Professor of Sociology and Demography at Pennsylvania State University. I was previously an Assistant Professor of Medical Sociology at the University of Alabama-Birmingham. Before that, I earned my Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where I had an NIH-funded predoctoral traineeship through the Carolina Population Center, then completed a postdoctoral fellowship studying gene-environment interplay at the Institute of Behavioral Science and Institute for Behavioral Genetics at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Outside of work, I enjoy road biking, cooking, hiking, travel, middlebrow sci-fi/fantasy books and television, and rooting for the Dallas Cowboys in the face of their inevitable annual collapse. I am also fond of making mediocre watercolors of my 10-year-old beagle mix, Shiloh.

 

Teaching:

At Penn State, I teach courses on medical sociology, demography, research methods, and biodemography. In Fall 2022, I am teaching Introduction to Sociology.