Cindy-Lee Dennis

“Healthy babies start with healthy parents.”

Dr. Cindy-Lee Dennis is a Professor in the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing and the Faculty of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. She is a senior scientist at Lunenfeld-Tannenbaum Research Institute at Mt Sinai Hospital. Previously she held the Canada Research Chair in Perinatal Community Health and the Women’s Health Research Chair at Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, St. Michael’s Hospital. She is currently the principal investigator of seven large, multi-site studies and is a co-investigator on twenty-four other research projects concerning maternal, paternal, and infant health outcomes with a particular focus on perinatal mental health, breastfeeding, preconception care, and e-health interventions. She holds over $23 million in funding as a principal investigator from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and is the co-PI of HeLTI Canada, one of the largest preconception care trials in the world incorporating over 5200 families across Canada. She has over 300 peer-review publications and is the lead author on eight Cochrane systematic reviews and has provided over 175 invited presentations. She developed the Breastfeeding Self-Efficacy Scale, the most widely used breastfeeding measure in the world that has been translated into over 20 different languages. Dr. Dennis has worked with the Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services, the Provincial Council for Maternal and Child Health, and Public Health Ontario to influence policy and improve the care provided to women and their families across the perinatal period.