The goal of all my research projects is to document, describe, understand, and ultimately address how our interactions with each other, with our communities, and with institutions in our society influence population health and health inequalities between social groups, with a primary focus on racial and ethnic health inequalities. Currently, the majority of my projects focus on three topics: 1) the structural determinants of reproductive health disparities, 2) how contact with the criminal legal system influences health, and 3) the social determinants of health in Latin America. You can read more about ongoing projects related to these topics by clicking the images below. A full list of my ongoing and published research is on my CV.
Reproductive Health Inequalities
Wise and Pursley (1992) argue that infant mortality is a "social mirror", meaning that this and other reproductive health outcomes are indicators of larger social processes. Furthermore, disparities in these outcomes reveal how inequalities within a society become embodied and are transferred across generations. My research follows in this tradition by investigating the social determinants of reproductive health disparities across groups defined race, ethnicity, nativity, social class, and so on. The image on the right is from a current research project (with Mosi Ifatunji) investigating the association between nativity, migration history, and the risk of several infant health outcomes.
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Criminal Legal Contact and Health
The scale of contact with the criminal legal system in the United States is unprecedented and staggering. In addition, the risk of contact is not evenly distributed across population groups. People who experience contact with the criminal legal system are more likely to be young, poor, male, and Black, Latino, or Indigenous. Furthermore, people who are incarcerated or experience other forms of contact with the criminal legal system are not social isolates. The health consequences of contact with the criminal legal system "spillover" from individuals and impact their family members, communities, and have implications for population health. My current research projects critically investigate these spillover consequences. The image on the left is from an applied project (with Hedy Lee) investigating the association between prison incarceration and COVID-19 community spread in Missouri.
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Health Inequalities in Latin America
Historical and contemporary narratives of “racial mixture” (e.g., mestizaje, racial democracy) downplay the role of ethno-racial discrimination, both structural and interpersonal, in producing social and economic inequalities across groups defined by race, ethnicity, and skin color in Latin America. As a result, relatively little is known about the social determinants of ethno-racial health inequalities in Latin America. My research in this area seeks to illuminate these social determinants with a specific focus on perceived discrimination and cultural narratives of ethno-racial inequality. The image on the right is from a current project (with Ellis Monk, Hedy Lee, María Vignau-Loría, and Thiago Marques) that describes differences in perceived discrimination across several "domains", ethno-racial identity, and skin color in four countries: Mexico, Peru, Colombia, and Brazil.
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