Ryan J. Petteway, MD

Dr. Ryan J. Petteway is a public health professor, scholar, and educator who integrates social epidemiology, participatory research, and creative arts to advance health equity. He engages critical, Black feminist, and decolonizing theory and methods to pursue procedural and epistemic justice and advance antiracist praxis within public health research/practice, including via music and poetry. His applied research integrates social epidemiology and CBPR/YPAR to improve empirical and conceptual understanding of place and health, making use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to democratize/enhance research and public health practice processes. This work has included the development of a STEAM-based high school curriculum/training program focused on social determinants of health (SDH), health equity, and participatory research—yHEART PDX, the youth Health Equity and Action Research Training program . Broadly, his current research and scholarship engages two general areas: 1) notions of “place”, embodiment, and “placemaking” in community health, and the social, economic, and political processes that govern the spatial distribution of health opportunities, and 2) epistemic, procedural, and distributive justice within public health knowledge production processes, e.g. considerations of power and epistemic violence/oppression. Dr. Petteway’s scholarship and creative works have been honored with multiple Society for Public Health Education paper of the year awards (2021, 2022), a health data visualization prize from the American Association of Geographers (2019), a national poetry month prize (2020), a Pushcart Prize nomination (2020), and selections as finalist or short/long list for various other prizes. His research/scholarship has appeared in a range of top-tier public health journals, including Social Science & Medicine, Journal of Urban Health, American Journal of Public Health, Health Affairs, and Health Education & Behavior. His poetry—much of which explicitly names and centers antiracist and decolonizing praxis as integral to health equity research, discourse, and action—has appeared in both peer-reviewed public health and traditional poetry journals, including Health Promotion Practice, International Journal of Epidemiology, Critical Public Health, Kithe Journal, and Bellevue Literary Review. He thinks ANOVA GEE would be an interesting choice for a child’s name, and is convinced that BDP can tell us more about health than TPB. He’s an alum of the University of Virginia, University of Michigan, and UC Berkeley. #FirstGen. And still reps The Ville. www.rjpetteway.com

Elena’s passion is to right inequities and improve healthcare for underserved populations. At BMCHS she co-leads the Health Equity Accelerator and oversees our Grayken Center for Addiction. Prior to joining BMCHS, she was an Associate Partner at McKinsey where she served clients in the Medicaid space. She co-founded McKinsey’s Center for Societal Benefit through Healthcare, focused on underinvested areas of healthcare such as mental health, addiction, or social determinants of health. Elena holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Edinburgh and an MBA from MIT Sloan. She was named 40 under 40 by the Boston Business Journal.

Villarosa’s contribution to The New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project highlights race-based physiological myths that have endured in medical practice since slavery. The idea that Black people have a superhuman tolerance for pain began during slavery as a way to justify the institution and to continue torturing Black bodies, and the idea has endured to this day. As recently as 2016, nearly half of medical students and residents still held at least one fallacious slavery-era assumption that Black bodies are fundamentally different from white bodies, including the idea that Black people have physically thicker skin, different nerve endings, or blood that coagulates differently. An expanded version of her essay was included in the book The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. As a longtime writer and editor for The New York Times, Villarosa has explored many of these issues in reported pieces over the years. She has written about staggeringly high death rates from HIV/AIDS in Black gay and bisexual communities; the disproportionate toll COVID-19 has taken on Black communities in America; and the environmental justice movement in Philadelphia. A 2021 essay focused on the difference in life expectancy in predominantly Black and white Chicago neighborhoods—depending on the zip codes the gap can be as much as 30 years difference. A member of the Association of LGBTQ Journalists (NLGJA) Hall of Fame, Villarosa has been recognized with numerous awards from organizations including The American Medical Writers’ Association, The Arthur Ashe Institute, Lincoln University, the New York Association of Black Journalists, the National Women’s Political Caucus, and the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center. In 2017, her New York Times Magazine cover story “America’s Hidden HIV Epidemic” was honored with an Excellence in Journalism Award from NLGJA. Her 2018 cover story on infant and maternal mortality in Black mothers and babies was a finalist for the National Magazine Award. Villarosa is the editor of Body & Soul: The Black Women’s Guide to Physical Health and Emotional Well-Being. Her novel, Passing for Black, was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. She is a graduate of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, where she is a professor and journalist in residence. She also teaches journalism, English and Black Studies at the City College of New York.

Vikas Saini, MD, is president of the Lown Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that believes a radically better healthcare system is possible. Dr. Saini leads the Institute’s signature project, the Lown Institute Hospitals Index for Social Responsibility, which includes measures never used before, like hospital racial inclusivity, ceo-to-staff pay equity, and avoidance of overuse. Dr. Saini trained in cardiology at Harvard, where he also practiced and taught. He also worked in private practice in the community setting for more than fifteen years. He is founder of a successful primary care physician contracting network and the co-founder of a ground-breaking medical device company. He also serves as chair of the Right Care Alliance, a grassroots network of clinicians, patient activists, and community leaders organizing to put patients, not profits, at the heart of health care.