Karen Matvienko-Sikar is a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Public Health, University College Cork, Ireland where she also completed her PhD in Applied Psychology. Her PhD thesis focused on interventions to improve psychological and physical well-being outcomes during pregnancy. As part of this research, she developed a number of key recommendations for prenatal mindfulness interventions and mindfulness intervention effects on cortisol. These are currently expanding research areas that are limited by poor reporting of intervention and sample collection fidelity.

Dr. Matvienko-Sikar is currently working on the development of an infant feeding intervention to prevent childhood obesity. In addition to synthesizing the existing quantitative and qualitative evidence, she is leading the development of a core outcome set (COS) for infant feeding interventions delivered to children under one year of age. The development of this COS is essential for the transparency, synthesis, and reproducibility of trials of effective interventions for childhood obesity.

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