Dr. Brenda Leung

Biography

Dr. Leung’s research focuses on nutrition and brain function. She has published studies on maternal mental health and child development including nutritional treatments for children with neurodevelopment disorders, metabolomics profiling of metabolic function in pregnant women, mental healthcare needs of children in Alberta, and nutrient status of women with gestational diabetes and perinatal depression. Dr. Leung is a founding investigator of the Alberta Pregnancy Outcomes and Nutrition (APrON) study, a longitudinal pregnancy cohort study aimed to determine the relationship between maternal nutrient status during pregnancy and maternal mental health and child health and development. She has led a number of APrON publications on maternal mood and have presented at national and international conferences on nutrition and mental health for clinical and public health audiences. She is also a principal investigator of the Micronutrients for Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Youth (MADDY) study, where she has led or co-authored a dozen publications using the MADDY data. She is the Director of the Collaborative Health Research Institute of Southern Alberta, as well as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences, Cumming School of Medicine. University of Calgary. She currently co-chairs the Alberta Chronic Pain Strategy and serves on the Board of Directors with the Canadian Interdisciplinary Network in Complementary and Alternative Medicine (INCAM) Research, and the International Society of Complementary Integrative Traditional Medicine Research (ISCMR).