About the PI

Dr. Paul Peters, PhD

My research starts from a simple but persistent observation: health is unequally distributed in ways that maps can reveal. The social determinants of health — income, education, ethnicity, place — produce patterns that are simultaneously local and structural. My work tries to hold both of those scales in view at once, using quantitative and spatial methods to understand how inequality in health is produced, reproduced, and measured at the level of small places and small populations.

The substantive areas of my research are varied but connected — by the use of linked administrative and survey data, by the application of health and social statistics, and by the development of geographic methods in health. My active research projects include access to rural health services; environmental exposures and neurodevelopmental disorders; and mortality inequalities using a multiple-cause of death approach. I prefer research that is collaborative in nature and that engages with diverse colleagues across disciplines, institutions, and sectors.

Current Position and Affiliations

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Sciences at Carleton University, cross-appointed in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies. I serve as Academic Director of the Carleton Research Data Centre, part of the Canadian Research Data Centre Network, which provides researchers with access to confidential Statistics Canada microdata in a secure environment.

Research profiles: Google Scholar · ORCID 0000-0001-5225-2005

Career

Prior to joining Carleton I held a Tier II Canada Research Chair in the Spatial and Social Inequalities of Health and Health Services at the University of New Brunswick.

Before beginning my academic career, I was a Research Analyst in the Health Analysis Division of Statistics Canada from 2008 to 2014. As one of the few researchers in the Agency with geographic expertise, I developed projects integrating geographical analysis into policy-relevant health research — including methods for analyzing health inequalities in Indigenous populations, census data linkage methodologies, and approaches to integrating environmental data with large population datasets. That experience directly shaped the methodological foundations of the lab’s current work.

Education

I hold a PhD in Sociology (Demography) from the University of Texas at Austin and the Population Research Center, and an MES in Planning from the University of Waterloo. I was an Andrew W. Mellon Doctoral Fellow and a SSHRC Doctoral Fellow.

Open Data and the Rural Data Portal

Alongside peer-reviewed research, the lab develops and maintains open data resources through the Rural Data Portal — a research, mapping, and data platform focused on rural health and the social determinants of health in Canada. The portal is built around the Canadian Accessibility and Remoteness Index (CARI+), a population-weighted measure of travel time and distance from every dissemination area in Canada to essential services including emergency departments, schools, and birth services.

All data releases are versioned, archived on Borealis with DOIs and licences, and accompanied by plain-language summaries to ensure the work is accessible to researchers, policymakers, public health professionals, and community partners alike.

Teaching

My teaching spans quantitative methods, health communication, and policy analysis, with a consistent emphasis on building students’ capacity to work with real data in applied health research contexts. I have taught courses in Applied Health Statistics, Social Demography, Economic Geography, Health Science Communication, and Public Policy Analysis. I also deliver short-course seminars on GIS, postal code geocoding using PCCF+, and indicators for the social determinants of health.

Connect

I welcome inquiries from prospective graduate students and potential collaborators. If your work engages questions of health inequality, spatial methods, rural health, or population data, I encourage you to get in touch at paul.peters@carleton.ca.