HJBR Jul/Aug 2023

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE I  JUL / AUG 2023 27 Amanda Staiano, PhD Associate Professor and Director of Pediatric Obesity and Health Behavior Pennington Biomedical Research Center Amanda Staiano, PhD, MPP, MS, is associate professor and director of the Pediatric Obesity & Health Behavior Laboratory at LSU’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center. She earned a doctorate in developmental psychology and Master of Public Policy at Georgetown University, followed by a Master of Science in Clinical Research at Tulane University. Her primary interest is developing and testing family-based healthy lifestyle interventions that utilize innovative technology to decrease pediatric obesity and its comorbidities. Her research has involved more than 2,500 children and adolescents, including randomized controlled trials and prospective cohorts, to examine body weight reduction and the influence of physical activity and sedentary behavior on body composition and cardiometabolic risk factors. She also served on the clinical practice guidelines committee on child obesity treatment for the American Academy of Pediatrics. Q&A