Ryan Petteway

2 Posts

Ryan Petteway is assistant professor at OHSU-PSU School of Public Health at Portland State University. His current work examines notions of place, placemaking, and health in public housing and community development.

A map displaying the boundary of a neighborhood, with several green markers within the boundary and many other green markers outside of it.

Community Development Field

Let’s Re-Place the Health Opportunity Maps

January 20, 2021 | Ryan Petteway

The way we map health opportunity has serious flaws. How can we make those maps more reflective of communities’ lived experiences?

The polygon outline is the residential census tract for the participants’ housing project community, represented by the single black marker. Green markers represent places participants identified as positive, healthy, and good, while red markers represent places identified as negative, unhealthy, and bad.

Health

The Real Limits of Census Tracts, and Other Boundaries

May 7, 2018 | Ryan Petteway

We can’t truly understand how a person’s health is affected by where they live if we look only at data within arbitrary boundaries like census tracts and ignore the places people actually go and don’t go every day.