Dovile Vilda’s academic and research background is in social policy analysis and child/youth research, and her current work examines the role of state-level policies and other social determinants on maternal and child health. She received a Ph.D. in Child & Youth Research from the School of Social Work and Social Policy at Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) and a M.Sc. in Migration Studies/Social and Behavioral Sciences from Utrecht University (the Netherlands).

Vilda’s research interests include mixed research methods, social and health policy analysis, and conducting ethical research with vulnerable populations. In her next research project, she turns to explore and understand the reasons underlying persistent health disparities among children and youth from different racial and immigrant backgrounds. Using her skills and training in policy analysis and child/youth research as well as current work on social determinants of health, she proposes to move beyond individual and family-level explanations and to examine the associations between the state-level policies and disparities in child health outcomes.

During her scholarly retreat, she worked to develop a funding proposal for an interdisciplinary, secondary data analysis of the impact of social policies and area-level social, environmental and economic factors (e.g., concentrated disadvantage, structural racism, and crime) on children’s health outcomes in the US. Activities at the retreat involved reading and reviewing the relevant literature, finalizing research aims and objectives, drafting the full proposal, and conducting preliminary data analysis for inclusion of early evidence within the funding application.

“A Studio in the Woods Scholarly Retreat was a wonderful opportunity to devote all my time and attention to the project I was working on and to finally achieve the goals I had set up a while ago! The work I completed during this retreat will greatly contribute to setting up the next stages of my career as an early-career public health researcher.” – Dovile Vilda