Mythbusting with Michael Esposito

“Racial health disparities are a relic of the past.”

That’s a common refrain. But for sociologist and 2025 Scholar of the College Michael Esposito, it couldn’t be further from the truth.

In fact, the stark reality is this: for more than a century, as diseases, technologies, and public health practices have transformed, the gap in life expectancy between Black and white Americans has remained stubbornly wide. It’s not a historical fluke. It’s a feature of the system.

At the College of Liberal Arts, Esposito is part of a new wave of researchers reshaping how we understand population health. His work investigates how racialized systems like housing, education, and even transportation don’t just reflect inequality, they actively produce it. “We’ve built our institutions in ways that layer privilege onto white populations and hazard onto BIPOC communities,” he says.

And Esposito isn’t just pointing fingers. He’s busting myths.

A Sociologist and a Scholar

As a 2025 Scholar of the College, Michael Esposito reminds us: scholarship can be a force for truth, for justice, and for lasting change.

The Scholar of the College award is presented annually by CLA to recognize and celebrate outstanding achievement by faculty in the college. Scholars of the College are chosen based on past accomplishments and contributions in the areas of scholarly research or other creative work, teaching, and service, and the promise of further achievement. 

Myth 1: Redlining is over.

There’s a belief that the overtly racist housing policies of the past, such as redlining, have no bearing on today’s health outcomes. Esposito disagrees.

In a recent paper with colleague Nick Vargas, Esposito explored how the legacy of redlining is embedded not just in the neighborhoods it once marked, but in the broader logic of American cities. “It’s not just that one neighborhood got marked with a red ‘D’ and is still suffering,” he explains. “It’s that redlining taught us how to distribute resources and how to justify withholding them.”

Even areas that didn’t exist during the redlining era often mirror its power dynamics. “We’re still operating under those assumptions,” Esposito says. “And that shapes everything from investment patterns to environmental hazards to health outcomes.”

Myth 2: Investment alone will fix disparities.

Throwing money at a problem sounds like a solution. But without addressing power, Esposito says, you’re likely just rearranging the same inequalities.

“You can invest in communities, and that’s obviously important,” he says. “But if you don’t change who holds power—who gets to decide where the highway goes, who gets the new clinic—you’re going to replicate the same patterns.”

He points to a telling example: in the 1990s, a breakthrough drug drastically reduced infant mortality. Yet racial disparities in infant deaths widened. Why? Because powerful, well-resourced communities accessed the drug first and fastest. “It’s not just about access,” he says. “It’s about who gets to benefit first and who’s left behind.”

Myth 3: Health research and sociology are separate.

People are often surprised to hear Esposito is a sociologist studying health. But he insists the two fields are inseparable.

“Public health is just sociology with data,” he jokes, though he’s only half kidding. Esposito’s work draws on demography, urban planning, and philosophy, arguing that liberal arts disciplines offer vital tools for understanding and addressing health disparities.

Esposito and collaborators across the country are dreaming bigger, designing research agendas that bring together statisticians, philosophers, storytellers, and scientists. “We need to imagine population health the way science fiction writers imagined AI,” he says. “Boldly, creatively, and with real human consequences in mind.”

The Bigger Picture

Esposito didn’t plan to study health disparities. In graduate school, he wanted to focus on political sociology and how Black Americans navigate partisan politics. But a chance conversation with a mentor introduced him to the world of health sociology. Once he took a demography class, he was hooked.

“I realized that while everything else in public health had changed—disease patterns, medicine, technology—the same inequalities persisted,” he says. “That was shocking. And I wanted to know why.”

Esposito admits he’s still working on how to translate his findings into policy. “That’s the big post-tenure question,” he laughs. But one thing is clear: any meaningful solution must go beyond simple fixes. It must grapple with power and ultimately redistribute it.

“If you don’t touch power,” he says, “you’re just tinkering around the edges.”

Esposito’s research reveals a hard truth: racial health disparities aren’t accidents. They’re the outcome of systems working exactly as they were designed. Busting these myths isn’t just about setting the record straight. It’s about creating the intellectual and political space to do better.

“We need to stop asking how bad neighborhoods cause bad health,” he says. “And start asking how systems create both.”