Dr. Petteway Celebrates The Intersection of Poetry and Public Health

The Stats & Stanzas Poetry event hosted by the School of Public Health, featuring Dr. Ryan Petteway offers a necessary space for healing, resistance, and resurgence as public health engages pressing concerns like structural racism, racialized police violence, and climate change. In pursuit of racial and health justice, this event illuminates the necessity of both Stats *and* Stanzas to create public health futures of radical possibility.

The event also features guests from Self Enhancement Inc youth poets, Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon youth poets, and poet/author Brianna Renae – learn more about the event.

Ryan Petteway, associate professor at the Oregon Health & Science University-Portland State University School of Public Health, used to see his passion for poetry and his career as a social epidemiologist as separate. In 2020, the pandemic helped him realize he could — and actually had to — integrate the two to be true to himself. Since then, he’s been encouraging others to see poetry as a valid and necessary form of public health scholarship.

Learn more about Dr. Petteway’s love for poetry and music, and how it continues to shape his career in Public Health.