Karen Villanueva

Karen Villanueva is a Research Fellow at the Social Equity Research Centre, RMIT University, Melbourne, and a Honorary Research Associate at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute. Her research interests are focused on how urban neighbourhoods shape child health behaviours and outcomes. In particular, she is interested in locational and socio-environmental determinants of children’s independent mobility, activity spaces (areas they roam), and early development. 

Karen has a public health research background and has managed complex mixed methods research projects at a national scale, and extended her research expertise in place and health to an early childhood context. A sample of her recent research and project experience includes:

•    Skills in conceptualising and developing spatial measures of the neighbourhood built environment, and application of spatially-derived indices to child mobility behaviours and health outcomes, including early childhood development. She was involved in securing the successful linkage of spatial built environment measures (e.g. parks, housing, walkability, transport) to over 200,000 children’s homes in the 2015 Australian Early Development Census. The aim of the project is to develop neighbourhood built environment indicators of early childhood development for informing place-based planning and initiatives.
•    Project Coordinator of the Kids in Communities Study (KiCS), an Australian mixed method investigation of how community-level factors in five areas—physical environment, social environment, socio-economic factors, access to services, and governance—are influencing early childhood developmental outcomes. KiCS investigators included academic experts from 6 universities, and policymakers and child development professionals from over 10 government and non-governmental partner organisations. More about the project can be found here: https://www.mcri.edu.au/kics

Prior to joining RMIT University, Karen was a Researcher at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, The University of Melbourne, and the Centre for the Built Environment and Health, The University of Western Australia. She has also worked as a Project Coordinator for Emergency Risk Management at the City of Bayswater Local Government, Western Australia.