Department of Human Ecology

Dr. Ontai’s research aims to understand on the development of children’s health-related behaviors in the family context. Her work examines how families navigate barriers to facilitating children’s adoption of healthy lifestyle behaviors in early development, and factors that affect health socialization processes between caregivers and young children. She actively translates and disseminates research in this area to inform UC Cooperative Extension programs that serve families with young children.

Select Publications

(A complete list of published work can be found at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/1lw3Qtbo7gdQw/bibliography/public/ ).

Ontai, LL. & Hibel, LC (2025). Multisystem Interconnected Lifestyle Framework: A holistic approach to examining the lifestyle determinants of obesity in early childhood. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 57, 355-362. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneb.2024.12.009.

Díaz Rios, LK, Ontai, LL, Shilts, MK, Lanoue, L, Townsend, MS. (2023) Cross-cultural adaptation and initial validation of Mi Niño, a tool to measure food-related parenting practices of Spanish-speaking parents with young children. Current Developments in Nutrition, 7, online. doi: 10.1016/j.cdnut.2022.100002

Townsend, M.S., Shilts, M.K., Lanoue, L.., Drake, C., Diaz Rios, L.K., Keim, N.L., Styne, D.M., Ontai, L. (2023). Obesity risk assessment for Spanish speaking immigrant families with young children in the United States: Reliability and validity with nutrient values. Children, 10, 868. doi: 10.3390/children10050868.

Ontai, LL, Sutter, C, Sitnick, S, Shilts, MK, Townsend, M. (2020). Parent food-related behaviors and family-based dietary and activity environments: Associations with BMI z-scores in low-income preschoolers. Childhood Obesity, 16, S55-63. doi: 10.1089/chi.2019.0105

Townsend, M.S., Shilts, M.K., Lanoue, L., Drake, C., Diaz-Rios, K., Styne, D.M., Keim, N.L., & Ontai, L.L. (2020). Obesity risk assessment tool for low-income Spanish speaking immigrant parents with young children: Validity with BMI and biomarkers of obesity. Nutrients, 12, online. doi: 10.3390/nu12113582

Ontai, LL, Sutter, C.S., Sitnick, S., Shilts, M.K., Townsend, M. (2019). My Child at Mealtime parent feeding self-assessment tool: Validation with mealtime behaviors and general parenting. Appetite, 136: 62-69. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2019.01.016

Sutter, C., Taylor, J., Nishina, A., Ontai, L. (2019). Parental and family predictors of fruits and vegetables in elementary school children's home-packed lunches across a school week. Appetite, 133: 423-432. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2018.12.003

PhD

Ph.D. University of Nebraska.