Dr. Esposito investigates how broad, racialized social systems – and their constituent institutions – are configured in ways that layer privileges on white populations and hazards on BIPOC populations. His research ultimately seeks to understand how these systematically-distributed privileges and penalties arrive on population health.
This work includes studies that examine how the actions of race-cognizant institutions (e.g., law enforcement agencies) contribute to health disparities; research that considers how multiple racialized systems overlap to gate access to generative health contexts; and, projects which demonstrate how structural racism enters and distorts social processes that are foundational to well-being (e.g., the association among education and health).
Dr. Esposito uses contemporary statistical methods – Bayesian and counterfactual-based mediation approaches at the moment – across his work. Esposito’s research has appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; American Journal of Sociology; American Journal of Public Health and more.