Our mission is to train the next generation of health professionals to harness the power of public health to prevent eating disorders and related problems with food, weight, and appearance. We strive to create a society where girls, boys, and people of all genders can grow up at home in their own bodies.
The well-documented health risks of eating disorders and the high numbers of youth engaging in dangerous behaviors in attempts to control their weight and shape underscore the critical need for prevention. But current prevention efforts are not adequate. Prevention strategies are needed on a large scale to reach the millions of youth at risk. They also need to reach young people early, before they have started down the path of escalating weight and shape control behaviors that can eventually lead to an eating disorder and other serious health problems.
Substantial advances in our capacity to prevent eating disorders and dangerous weight and shape control behaviors will require concerted effort to integrate eating disorders prevention into the curricula of the nation’s training programs producing the next generation of public health and adolescent health professionals. Our mission with STRIPED is to do exactly that: To bring eating disorders prevention into the mainstream of training for public health and adolescent preventive medicine.
