Pooja Tandon, MD, MPH

Assistant Professor, Pediatrics (Primary department)
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Env. and Occ. Health Sciences
Dr. Pooja Tandon is a pediatrician and researcher at the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Research Institute and Assistant Professor at the University of Washington.  Dr. Tandon attended Brown University for her undergraduate education and medical school, and completed residency training at the Boston Combined Program in Pediatrics (Boston Children’s Hospital and Boston Medical Center).  After working as a general pediatrician in academic and community settings, she completed a general pediatrics research fellowship and a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree at the University of Washington.  While she continues clinical practice, her research interests include studying and intervening on social and environmental determinants of children’s health, in particular childhood obesity.  Her research has been funded by the American Heart Association, the Safeway Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Her current projects focus on studying the connection between outdoor play, physical activity and various health and development outcomes in preschool age children. She also co-leads national and international special interest groups focused on obesity prevention in the early childhood years.

Contact Information

Links

Affiliations

Research Interests

  • physical activity, obesity prevention, nature & health, early childhood

Teaching interests

general pediatrics

Education

MD, <unknown>, Brown University, 1999
MPH, Health Services, University of Washington, 2010
AB, Biology, Brown University, 1995

Projects

Sprout (Study of preschoolers outdoors)                                                       8/1/2013-4/30/2018
Role: PI
Funding: NHLBI, 1 K23 HL112950-01A1
The overall aim is to characterize outdoor physical activity for preschoolers at child care and to understand environmental and social determinants of outdoor physical activity in order to inform intervention development.


Active Play & Cognition study                                                                          2/15/2015-9/30-2016
Role: PI
Funding: CHBD Stimulus Funds
This is a pilot study to examine the acute effects of active play on preschoolers’ cognition.
Selected Publications

Tandon P, Zhou C, Lozano P, Christakis DA.  Preschoolers' total daily screen time at home and by type of child care. Journal of Pediatrics.  October 2010 (10.1016/j.jpeds.2010.08.005). PMID: 20980020.


Tandon P, Garrison M, Christakis DA.  Physical activity and beverage consumption in home- and center-based child care settings.  Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 44(4): 355-359. 2012. PMID: 22564855.


Tandon P, Zhou C, Christakis DA.  The frequency of outdoor play for preschool age children cared for at home-based child care settings.  Acad Pediatr. 2012 Nov-Dec;12(6):475-80. doi: 10.1016/j.acap.2012.06.010. Epub 2012 Sep 12. PMID: 22980727


Tandon P, Zhou C, Christakis DA. Frequency of parent-supervised outdoor play of us preschool-aged children. Archives of pediatrics & adolescent medicine (now JAMA Pediatrics). 2012:1-6.


Tandon P, Saelens B, Zhou C, Kerr J, Christakis D. Indoor Versus Outdoor Time in Preschoolers at Child Care. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. 2013;44(1):85-88. PMID:23253655


Tandon P, Saelens B, Christakis DA. Active Play Opportunities at Child Care. Pediatrics 2015.


Tandon P, Fengler S, Moran L, Lengua L. BMI mediates the effects of low income on preschool children’s executive control, with implications for behavior and academics. Childhood Obesity 2015.


Jayasuriya* A, Williams M, Edwards T, Tandon P. Parents' perceptions of preschool activities: exploring outdoor play. Early Education and Development. 2015 (in press).
 

Review date: 
7/22/2017