“Sports participation can have so many health, social, and psychological benefits, but in some sports female athletes are at increased risk for disordered eating, often due to pressures within the athletic environment.  Sports teams have been studied as sources of negative body and eating-related pressure, but have not been studied as potential sources of positive pressure to behave in healthy ways—something I hope to change with my dissertation work.  My goals are to understand risk and protective factors within the team environment and ultimately develop and evaluate programs aimed at enhancing the positive consequences of sport participation.” -Emily

Emily Kroshus is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at HSPH. Her doctoral dissertation is focused on evaluating how a positive, strength-based approach can help prevent disordered eating among female athletes and how teams can promote these strengths.  Previous research on the “contagion” of eating-related attitudes and behaviors among groups of females has focused on negative attitudes and pathological behaviors.  Her work aims to bring a positive orientation to the conversation about the prevention of disordered eating among female athletes.

Emily is a collaborator with the Female Athlete Triad Project, helping to develop and evaluate educational materials about the Female Athlete Triad for high school coaches in the state of New York.  She is also leading efforts to evaluate the implementation of a mindfulness-based eating disorder prevention program in South Carolina. For her other work on health in the sports context, she is the 2012-13 recipient of the NCAA’s Graduate Student Research Grant for her research evaluating collegiate concussion education programs.