Faculty Directory
María Piñeros-Leaño
Assistant Professor
María Piñeros-Leaño
Ph.D.
Contact
McGuinn Hall 302
Telephone: 617-552-4043
Email: maria.pinerosleano@bc.edu
Education
- B.S., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- M.S.W., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- M.P.H., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Research Interests
Maternal and child mental and physical health; risk factors of maternal depression and mood disorders; social-contextual antecedents to childhood obesity; and prevention trials for childhood obesity
Expertise
- Gender
- Global Practice
- Immigrants and Refugees
- Implementation Science
- Latinx Communities
- Mental Health
- Social Determinants of Health
Profile
Assistant Professor María Piñeros-Leaño, PhD, MSW, MPH, joined the School of Social Work in 2018. She obtained her PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she was an Illinois Transdisciplinary Obesity Prevention Program Fellow. Her research focuses on understanding the links between maternal mental health and child health. Specifically, her current research explores the role that maternal depression has on the development of childhood obesity among minority groups. She also does extensive research on culturally-adapted interventions to work with Latinx populations.
Dr. Piñeros-Leaño’s most recent work explores the effects that maternal depression has on childhood obesity using secondary data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. She has also investigated feeding choices and practices among first generation Latina mothers. She conducted in-depth interviews with 30 participants to understand how feeding practices changed before and after migration to the United States. Dr. Piñeros-Leaño is also a co-PI in a transnational study between the United States and Mexico that investigates the repercussions of acculturation on body composition among mothers and children.