Tamara Cohen

Tamara Cohen is an Associate Professor in the Food, Nutrition and Health department within the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia. She serves as Director of Dietetics Programs and Associate Dean for Students and Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. Dr. Cohen joined UBC in January 2020 after previously working at McGill University, where she was a faculty member and clinical dietetics coordinator. She is also an investigator at the Healthy Starts research institute at BC Children's Hospital, a Non-Indigenous Cultural Safety Facilitator for UBC, and maintains external affiliations with Concordia University's PERFORM Centre and Montreal Children's Hospital Pediatric Department.

Her research program focuses on understanding eating behaviors in relation to weight management across the lifespan. She leads the Nutrition and Eating Behaviour Lab (NEBLab), which conducts qualitative studies that inform larger randomized clinical trials. The main research themes include creating new tools for dietary adherence, studying health behaviors related to pregnancy and gestational weight gain, childhood and adolescent obesity, and intuitive eating. Her research is patient-oriented and always involves dietitians in the forefront of lifestyle interventions.

Dr. Cohen's research output demonstrates a strong focus on developing practical dietary assessment tools that align with Canada's Food Guide, examining family mealtime dynamics, and creating gender-sensitive interventions for adolescent athletes. Her work spans multiple populations including adults with obesity, adolescents with severe obesity, pregnant individuals, and older adults. She frequently employs mixed-methods approaches combining qualitative exploration with quantitative validation.

• 2021 CIHR Early Career Research Award in Maternal and Child Health
• 2021 UBC Research Excellence Cluster Award
• 2020 SSHRC Insight Development Grant
• 2020 UBC SPARC Hampton Award
• 2019 PERFORM Centre Multidisciplinary Research Award

Dr. Cohen actively supervises multiple graduate students across various research projects, including PhD candidates studying gender influences on teen athletes' food habits and Master's students developing dietary self-monitoring apps. She has secured funding from multiple sources including CIHR, SSHRC, R. Howard Webster Foundation, and Health Canada. Her research team includes PhD students, Master's students, research staff, and undergraduate volunteers working collaboratively on multiple projects related to eating behaviors and weight management.

The NEBLab maintains active research partnerships with BC Children's Hospital, Concordia University's PERFORM Centre, and Montreal Children's Hospital. Current projects include the EatGen Study examining gender influences on teen athletes' food habits, the iCANPlate Study developing a dietary self-monitoring app, and multiple studies examining family mealtime dynamics and dietary concordance between parents and children.