Karen Sheehan, MD, MPH is a Professor of Pediatrics and Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. In addition to her role with SCY, she is also the founding Medical Director of the Injury Prevention and Research Center (IPRC) at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago which focuses on unintentional and intentional (including child abuse) pediatric injury prevention. Dr. Sheehan’s research and practice has been community engaged ranging from using community based participatory research to evaluate youth development programming as a strategy to prevent violence to applying policy-system-environmental change strategies in her work with the Chicago Park District to help inform the replacement of 350 playgrounds because of safety issues. Dr. Sheehan has held leadership positions in the Injury Free Coalition for Kids, Kids in Danger, and the American Academy of Pediatrics’ former Section on Injury, Violence and Poison Prevention.
