Growing up in Washington, DC during the transformative 1980s—a time of significant social, economic, and physical change—Peter developed a lasting interest in how the environments where we live, work, and play influence our health. 

With a background in environmental health and epidemiology, his research focuses on quantifying how spatial factors—such as access to nature, the built environment, food environments, air and light pollution, noise, and socioeconomic conditions—affect health behaviors, mental health, healthy aging, and chronic disease.

He has more than a decade of experience working with large, prospective cohort studies, including the Nurses’ Health Studies, the Framingham Heart Study, and the Southern Community Cohort Study, where he has helped to create of many geographic-based variables and linked them to health data. 

Peter has developed mobile health technology (mHealth) methodologies to assess real-time, high spatio-temporal resolution objective measures of location and behavior by linking smartphone-based global positioning systems (GPS) and wearable device accelerometry data to understand how contextual factors influence health behaviors.

Peter has authored over 180 peer-reviewed articles and his research has been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Vice, CNN, NBC, NPR, and many other outlets. His work has been funded by the National Cancer Institute; the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; the National Institute on Aging; the National Institute for Minority Health and Health Disparities; the Environmental Protection Agency; the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences; and the REI Cooperative Action Fund, among others.

When he’s not working, Peter can be found outside, enjoying the beauty of nature, probably skiing, biking, running, or hiking with his two kids, Catherine and Declan, and his wife Leda.