Debra Franko, PhD

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Dr. Debra Franko is the Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at Northeastern University; Associate Research Director at the Eating Disorders Clinical and Research Program and a Consultant in Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. She has been on staff since 1998 and completed her postdoctoral training at the Eating Disorders Unit at MGH in 1988 after her internship at Beth Israel Hospital. She is currently the Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology at Northeastern University. She was a Visiting Scholar in Psychology at Wesleyan University for ten years and received a Distinguished Fellow Award from the Institute for Advanced Study at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. In 2015 she received the Lori Irving Award for Excellence in Eating Disorder Prevention and Awareness from the National Eating Disorder Association. Dr. Franko has been the principal investigator or co-investigator on multiple NIH grants focused on eating disorder and obesity prevention, the use of technology in addressing eating disorder risk, and the longitudinal study of eating disorders. Her most recent work has been to develop online programs for adolescents to prevent eating disorders and improve body image. She also recently completed a large-scale NIH-funded study examining binge eating disorder in ethnically diverse populations, and continues to focus on developing culturally-appropriate treatments for eating disorders. Dr. Franko has authored over 150 peer-reviewed publications in the area of eating disorders, body image, and obesity, and co-authored Unlocking the Mysteries of Eating Disorders: A Practical, Life-Saving Guide to Your Child’s Treatment and Recovery (McGraw-Hill).