Dr. Buchholz is a clinical psychologist and lead in outcomes management and research at the Centre for Healthy Active Living (CHAL); she is a clinical investigator with the Ready, Set, GO research team at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute, and an adjunct research professor in the Department of Psychology at Carleton University.
Dr. Buchholz is a co-investigator on the REAL study, ‘Research on Eating and Adolescent Lifestyles’, an Ottawa-based longitudinal study examining shared risk factors between eating disorders and obesity. Dr. Buchholz is involved as a co-investigator in several national multisite studies related to pediatric obesity, including the CANadian Pediatric Weight management Registry (CANPWR). She advocates and is involved in research related to social determinants of health, weight bias and discrimination, Health At Every Size (HAES), mental health, body image, and psychosocial clinical outcomes.
Research Projects
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Measuring severe obesity in pediatrics using body mass index‑derived metrics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization: a secondary analysis of CANadian Pediatric Weight management Registry (CANPWR) data.
18/09/2023
To examine the (i) relationships between various body mass index (BMI)-derived metrics for measuring severe obesity (SO) over time based the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) references and (ii) ability of these metrics to discriminate children and adolescents based on the presence of cardiometabolic risk factors. In this cohort study completed from 2013 to 2021, we examined data from 3- to 18-year-olds enrolled in the CANadian Pediatric Weight management Registry.
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Appearance satisfaction mediates the relationship between recreational screen time and depressive symptoms in adolescents
18/07/2022
Our results indicate that appearance satisfaction medi-ated the direct effect of recreational screen time on depressive symptoms, recreational screen time was sig-nificantly related to lower appearance satisfaction, which was significantly predictive of more severe depres-sive symptoms. As such, findings warrant randomized controlled trials designed to determine whether modu-lating screen time may be an efficacious strategy to reduce appearance dissatisfaction and depressive symp-toms during adolescence.
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Appearance satisfaction mediates the relationship between recreational screen time and depressive symptoms in adolescents
18/07/2022
Recreational screen time, including activities that involve using a screen for leisure (i.e., computer, videogames, television; U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2018) is a popular and predominantly sedentary pastime. Epidemiological data show that many adolescents exceed the <2-hr daily screen time recommendation based on the Canadian 24-hr Movement Guidelines for Children and Youth (Tremblay et al., 2016) by more than 6 hr each day (Leatherdale & Harvey, 2015). As screen time activities exert increased influence on adolescents' lives, it has spurred researchers to examine the implications of their use. High levels of recreational screen time activities have been associated with a host of physical health issues, such as sleep problems (Cabre-Riera et al., 2019), health risk behaviors, (i.e., illicit drug use; Rücker, Akre, Berchtold,& Suris, 2015) and risk of overweight status and obesity (Fang, Mu, Liu, & He, 2019). Alarmingly, one additional hour of daily screen time has been linked to 172 additional servings of beverages high in sugar and 368 additional servings of ‘unhealthy’ snack foods each year among adolescents (Hicks, Jillcot Pitts, Lazorick, Fang, & Rafferty, 2019).
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Individual and family characteristics associated with health indicators at entry into multidisciplinary pediatric weight management: Findings from the CANadian Pediatric Weight management Registry (CANPWR)
07/02/2022
This highlights the importance of these modifiable health behaviors on multiple health indicators in children with obesity.
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Examining the Bidirectional Association Between Body Esteem and Body Mass Index During Adolescence
01/11/2021
The decreasing trajectory of body esteem over time suggests the need for prevention efforts to improve body esteem throughout adolescence.