Cindy-Lee Dennis PhD, FCAHS

Dr. Dennis has focused her research career on rigorously evaluating interventions that can directly improve the health of mothers and fathers, with the overall goal of improving child health and well-being.

Dr. Dennis has over 25 years of experience leading large cohort studies and randomized controlled trials — including the evaluation of intervention care models that leverage technology to improve clinical effectiveness and accessibility — recruiting participants from all across Canada. She is a leading international expert in perinatal mental health in both mothers and fathers. She developed the Breastfeeding Self-Efficacy Scale, the most widely used breastfeeding measure internationally that has been translated into over 20 different languages to identify women early who are at risk of poor breastfeeding outcomes. She also developed a highly effective breastfeeding self-efficacy enhancing intervention to improve exclusivity rates at 6 months. She currently leads numerous studies including a $17 million preconception study entitled HeLTI Canada (Healthy Life Trajectory Initiative). HeLTI Canada was developed in partnership with the World Health Organizationand is one of four separate but harmonized cohort randomized controlled trials focused on developing evidence-based care for families that span from preconception across pregnancy and into the postpartum period and early childhood. The aim is to improve the health and well-being of children by preventing the development of obesity and chronic diseases. As part of the consortium and to provide a global perspective, the other three HeLTI studies are being conducted in Soweto (South Africa), Mysore (India), and Shanghai (China). She has over 345 peer-reviewed publications with an h-index of 97 and an i10-index of 240 (‪Cindy-Lee Dennis – ‪Google Scholar).

Dr. Dennis’s achievements have been widely recognized; she has held multiple research chairs, including a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Perinatal Community Health (2007-2013, 2013-2018), the Shirley Brown Chair in Women’s Mental Health Research at Women’s College Hospital (2011-2016), the Women’s Health Research Chair at St. Michael’s Hospital (2016-2023), and recently the Heather Reisman Chair in Perinatal Nursing Research at Sinai Health. She is cross appointment with the University of Toronto, Department of Psychiatry and holds an appointment as a Senior Scientist at the Lunenfeld-Tannenbaum Research Institute in Toronto, Ontario.

In 2018, Dr. Dennis was elected a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. She was also awarded the Marcé Medal by the International Marcé Society for her “continued achievements and commitment to research in the field of prenatal and postnatal mental health in women.”