2015 APHA Annual Meeting & Expo

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Recorded Annual Meeting Presentations (RAMP) are now available for purchase.
Only $90 for presenters, $140 for registered attendees and $200 for non-attendees.

Online Program

330784
Public housing is public health: Intergenerational photovoice perspectives of place, health, and opportunity in the “Structure(d) Struggle” among public housing residents


Tuesday, November 3, 2015 : 5:30 p.m. - 5:50 p.m.

Ryan Petteway, DrPH, MPH, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health, Portland State University, Portland, OR
Audio (mp3) recording Recorded Presentation (mp4)
Background:  Place-based strategies are increasingly seen as options to improve health and life opportunities. This is especially true for residents of public housing, as many prominent strategies are Department of Housing and Urban Development initiatives. Still, there is often a spatial mismatch between where public housing residents live, and the resources/opportunities they need to sustain themselves. These non-residential places constitute a significant portion of their daily health-related opportunities/exposures. The extent to which the housing location and its external connectivity influence residents’ ability to meet their daily needs is instrumental to their well-being. Thus, understanding how public housing fits into the larger spatial, social, economic, and political landscape of residents’ lived “place” beyond the housing-community boundaries is critical to evaluating and improving place-based strategies involving public housing.

Objective: Through community-based participatory research: 1) Determine the spatial distribution of adult and youth daily places; 2) Characterize adult and youth experiences/perceptions of their daily places; and 3) Assess spatial and perceptual “place” differences between adults and youth.

Approach: Parent-child dyads were recruited from public housing and trained in 4 participatory action research methods: Photovoice, Activity Space Mapping, X-Ray Mapping, and Participatory GIS. Participants integrated their place-health findings via a collaborative multimedia-enabled web-based community mapping platform.

Results: This presentation will provide an overview of the project and detail the Photovoice methodology and findings, including data illustrations from the web-based mapping platform. It will close with discussion of implications for place-health research and the participatory design and implementation of place-based strategies involving public housing.

Learning Areas:

Advocacy for health and health education
Assessment of individual and community needs for health education
Implementation of health education strategies, interventions and programs
Public health or related research
Social and behavioral sciences

Learning Objectives:
List prominent place-based strategy examples involving public housing Demonstrate knowledge of core conceptual and methodological challenges in studying place and health Demonstrate knowledge of core aspects of the Photovoice methodology Discuss the value of participatory research in informing the development and implementation of place-based strategies Describe a novel methodological approach to studying place and health

Keyword(s): Community-Based Research (CBPR), Participatory Research

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: My research focuses on integrating social epidemiology, CBPR/PAR, and information & communication technologies for the local and actionable study of place and health between and across generations. I developed and am the PI on the research project to be presented.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

Back to: 4403.0: Community-Driven Change