Ester Villalonga Olives, PhD, MsC, is an associate professor in the Department of Practice, Sciences, and Health Outcomes Research (P-SHOR) at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy
About Dr. Villalonga Olives:
Dr. Villalonga-Olives, associate professor, is a tenured social epidemiologist who holds a PhD in Biomedicine with specialties in Epidemiology and Public Health. She completed her BsC in Sociology and MsC in Sociology and Health at the University of Barcelona in Spain, including a long international stay at the Università degli Study di Trieste in Italy. She received her PhD with International Doctor Distinction from Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Spain, and completed predoctoral research stays at the London School of Economics in the UK and the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany. During her PhD studies, she performed on-site public health interventions serving non-governmental organizations in India and Cuba.
Dr. Villalonga-Olives has held adjunct appointments at New York University and a joint appointment at the University of Maryland, Baltimore School of Medicine. She has also served as a teaching and research fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, a guest lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health and the University of Tarapacá in Arica (Chile), and has been a visiting professor at the Hôtel-Dieu Hospital in Paris (France). Additionally, she is a member of the University of Maryland Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center and has recently collaborated with United Nations members to operationalize social capital interventions in forced displacement situations. She was selected to be part of the first cohort of the Early Investigators Advancement Program of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), was awarded a GLOBALtimore teaching fellowship by the University of Maryland Baltimore Center for Global Engagement, served as an elected member of the board of the International Epidemiology Association for 10 years, and as an executive member of the Catalan Society for Public Health for three years. She also received an award from the Spanish Society of Epidemiology to complete training at the European Epidemiology Program in Florence (Italy).
Research Interests:
Dr. Villalonga-Olives’ research interests are related to the study of social determinants of health, with an emphasis on health inequalities and determinants such as social capital, structural and financial barriers and unfair treatment, and a focus on the design of health interventions. She has a background in psychometrics, holds a Certificate in Biostatistics from Harvard University, and has extensive experience adapting and developing measurement instruments. Dr. Villalonga’s research program has secured more than $4 million in extramural funding in recent years. She currently serves as Principal Investigator for multiple awards, including an NIH R01. In this study, she leads a multidisciplinary team of over 30 community leaders, psychometricians, social epidemiologists, and students applying qualitative methods and item response theory methods to develop a multilevel measure of structural and economic barriers and unfair treatment. Her work is also centered on implementing social capital interventions, and on the investigation of the relationship between social capital and health outcomes with a focus on underserved and vulnerable populations such as immigrants. In her other projects as a Principal Investigator funded by the Prevent Cancer Foundation and the Merck Investigator Studies Program, she is currently adapting cancer knowledge and health literacy instruments for Hispanics/Latinos living in the U.S., studying the presence of racial Differential Item Functioning in social indicators and implementing a social capital intervention to improve cancer screening rates of Hispanic/Latino immigrants in the Baltimore-Washington DC area. This work also included a research stay and fieldwork in El Salvador to better understand the migration contexts of Hispanic/Latino communities and to inform strategies that improve their migration experience into the United States.
She is a co-investigator on two NIH R01 awards. The first one evaluates the impact of individual- and neighborhood-level social connectedness on mental health in Black adults and is led by Dr. Yusuf Ransome from Yale University. The second one is an R01 aimed at developing a measure for shared decision-making in maternity care through Communicating CHOICes, CHildbirth Options, Information, and person-Centered Explanation, led by Dr. Rachel Breman from the University of Maryland Baltimore. She also serves as a key investigator, mentor, and steering committee member for the NIH-funded K12 program Advancing Oncologic Research Communities in Health Equity (ARCH) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the University of Maryland Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center, under the leadership of Dr. Taofeek Kunle Owonikoko.
Academic Service and Leadership:
She has used mixed methods, structural equation modeling, multilevel modeling, and item response theory in her research. At the University of Maryland Baltimore, she teaches graduate courses in Research Methods and Health Outcomes Assessment for PhD and Master’s students. Several articles published by Dr. Villalonga-Olives have received awards at international conferences, and her work has appeared in leading journals such as the American Journal of Epidemiology, Social Science & Medicine, and the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. She has served as an ad hoc reviewer for the NIH and continues to serve as a standing committee member for the French National Cancer Institute (INCa) across multiple study sections. She is the Chair of the Inclusive Excellence Council and a member of the Executive Council at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy. She also actively contributes to the scientific and organizing committees of multiple international conferences and professional events and has served as a guest editor for several scientific journals. In addition, she is the co-chair of the Special Interest Group on Measurement of the International Social Capital Association. Dr. Villalonga-Olives is fluent in English, Spanish, Catalan, and Italian, and has studied German and French at an intermediate level.
Contact Information:
Ester Villalonga Olives, PhD, MsC
Associate Professor in the Department of Practice, Sciences, and Health Outcomes Research
University of Maryland School of Pharmacy
220 Arch Street, 12th Floor
Baltimore, MD 21201
Phone: 410-706-4930
Email: ester.villalonga@rx.umaryland.edu