Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders (STRIPED)
Our initiative is a public health incubator, designed to cultivate novel insights and strategies for prevention. We introduce trainees to a rich array of disciplinary perspectives, methodologies, and theories and provide them with opportunities to join crosscutting collaborative teams.
Team
STRIPED is made up of a transdisciplinary team of dedicated scholars and trainees committed to the prevention of eating disorders and dangerous weight- and shape-control behaviors.
Faculty
Dr. Austin is an award-winning researcher, teacher, and mentor. She is the Founding Director of the Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders: A Public Health Incubator (STRIPED), based at the Harvard Chan School and Boston Children’s Hospital. Her program STRIPED is the first research and training program dedicated to eating disorders prevention based at a school of public health and with a specialization in research-to-policy translation.
Dr. Ariel Beccia (she/her) is a Research Scientist in the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital and faculty with the Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders (STRIPED) at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Boston Children’s Hospital. She is also an Instructor in Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and an Instructor in the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She received her PhD in epidemiology from the Clinical and Population Health Research program at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School in Worcester, MA, and completed a postdoctoral research fellowship with STRIPED that was funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD). As a social epidemiologist, Dr. Beccia’s research focuses on understanding the social and structural determinants of population-level eating disorder inequities, with a particular focus on inequities affecting LGBTQ+ youth. She also regularly collaborates on projects examining the drivers of mental health inequities more broadly and has a strong interest in integrating causal inference, econometric, and other advanced quantitative methods into this line of work. Alongside her research, Dr. Beccia leads STRIPED’s Eating Disorder Public Health Surveillance Working Group to help improve the monitoring of eating disorders and disordered eating among U.S. youth, especially via the CDC…
Dr. Kenney is an Assistant Professor at the Harvard Chan School in its Department of Nutrition. Her work focuses on identifying successful, efficient, and cost-effective strategies to help improve children’s healthy eating and physical activity behaviors, and help young children form healthy habits for life. Taking a holistic approach to child health, Dr. Kenney focuses not only on how schools and communities can support healthy eating and physical activity behaviors, but also on how experiencing weight stigmatization as a child in these settings can harm health, such as by increasing risk of disordered weight control behaviors and impairing academic achievement. Dr. Kenney mentored a Harvard Chan Master’s of Science student, Morgan Redman, to conduct a qualitative study of U.S. school teachers and their perspectives on how students with obesity are impacted by weight stigma in the school environment. She also mentored Suzanne Wintner, a Master’s of Public Health graduate from Harvard Chan who also recently completed a doctorate in social work at Simmons College, to complete a national survey of school administrators to document the types of obesity prevention programming that schools utilize and how this may impact weight-based teasing and bullying. Currently, she and her research team are working on a qualitative study of how students experience weight stigma in school settings and how obesity-related school programs can help or hurt.
Dr. Mattei is the Donald and Sue Pritzker Associate Professor of Nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She holds a BS in Microbiology from the University of Puerto Rico and an MPH in Epidemiology and Biostatistics and PhD in Nutritional Biochemistry from Tufts University. Her research focuses on genetic, dietary, and psychosocial factors in cardiometabolic diseases and allostatic load, emphasizing health disparities in U.S. and Latin American Hispanics/Latinos. Dr. Mattei leads culturally tailored community interventions and collaborates with large Hispanic/Latino cohorts and studies in Puerto Rico and Boston, funded by NIH and private foundations. Her global work includes partnerships across Latin America. Her goal is to promote healthier eating and health equity in underserved populations. A Fellow of the American Heart Association, she received its Mark Bieber Award for Outstanding Nutrition Research and is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Leader. Dr. Mattei advocates for the inclusion of underrepresented groups in research, minority students in education, and women and minorities in science.
Dr. Sarah Pitts is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, the Adolescent Medicine Fellowship Program Director at Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Program Director of MCHB (Maternal and Child Health Bureau) Leadership Education in Adolescent Health (LEAH) training program at Boston Children’s Hospital. Boston LEAH is one of seven MCHB funded interdisciplinary training programs in adolescent health. Dr. Pitts is a clinician educator and researcher, with expertise in eating disorder care, reproductive endocrinology, bone health, and complex contraceptive care. She established a national collaborative assessing adolescent use of long-acting reversible contraceptives.
Dr. Richmond, MD, MPH is a clinician researcher trained in Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine and social epidemiology with more than 10 years’ experience in conducting weight-related research while also providing care to a diverse population of adolescents. Her interest in social determinants of health and weight-related outcomes began as a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of Michigan. She is currently the Director of the Boston Children’s Hospital Eating Disorder Program, the Director of the STEP program, a program housed within the Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine program focused on the health and wellness of youth with elevated BMIs and with a particular expertise in treating youth with binge eating disorder (BED), and the Co-Director of the Boston Children’s Program for Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorders (ARFID). In her own practice, she treats patients with the full spectrum of eating disorder diagnoses in collaboration with nutrition and mental health colleagues. Dr. Richmond’s research and clinical interests span the eating and weight spectrum. She has a number of projects focused on the negative effects of weight stigma and the positive effects of body satisfaction. She is leading the RECOVERY project, a registry of patients with eating disorders that aims to uncover the treatment and intervention approaches that are most effective in treating different types of eating disorders.
Trainees
Ryan Ahmed
College Student, New York Institute of Technology
Caroline Berish, BS
J.D. Candidate, Michigan State University College of Law
Sarah Cheng
College Student, Brown University
Stephanie Diamond BA
J.D. Candidate, Michigan State University College of Law
Stanley Huang
Bachelor of Arts student, Economics, Boston University
Destiny Jackson
Doctoral student, Population Health Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Yuning Liu, MBBS, MS
Doctoral student, Population Health Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Junjie Anderson Lu, MD, MS, MPH
Doctoral student, Epidemiology and Clinical Research, Stanford University School of Medicine
Pari Patel
College Student, New York Institute of Technology
Sonile Peck, BS
Master of Public Health student in Health Policy, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Laura Torrent
Master of Public Health student, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Arshia Verma
College Student, Texas
Ariel (Bingbing) Zhao, MSc
Master of Science student in Global Health and Populations, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Fellows and Visiting Scholars
Maya Azar Atallah received her MSc in Nutrition and Behaviour in 2019, from Bournemouth University in England, with a focus on the impact of food policies on eating behaviors. As part of her master’s thesis, she conducted a study on the relationship between frequent nutrition fact label use and weight control measures among Lebanese young adults. Her primary goal was to determine if frequent use of nutrition fact labels is associated with higher engagement in healthy/unhealthy/extreme weight control measures and binge eating disorder, as a way to identify if high reliance on nutrition fact labels could be predictive of disordered eating and eating disorders. She became passionate about primary prevention of eating disorders through policy action while completing her MSc and studying the mental and social distress of experiencing an eating disorder as well the economic burden of eating disorder treatment on the healthcare system as well as the individuals. Maya collaborates with STRIPED as a research fellow on a global policy scan survey aimed to assess the different regulations of weight loss supplements in different countries. Maya plans to complete a PhD in public health to improve policies and fill in the gaps needed to build better primary prevention of eating disorders.
Marilyn Bromberg (“M”) is an Associate Professor at the University of Western Australia Law School in Perth, Australia, and one of the nation’s leading legal scholars on the myriad ways that law and policy related to advertising and social media can affect body image and mental health. She is an expert advisor for the Butterfly Foundation, the leading national Australian nonprofit organization supporting people with eating disorders and their families and advancing policy for treatment access and prevention. M will be a Visiting Scholar with STRIPED in February-March 2025. We are looking forward to exchanging knowledge and strategies for advancing our shared interests in research-to-policy translation, innovative legal solutions to harmful body image pressures on social media, and so much more.
Dr. Sook Ning Chua is the founder of Relate Malaysia – a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the provision of mental health services, education, training and advocacy since 2015. As a clinical psychologist, international researcher and educator, Sook has an extensive body of research publications and has shared her expertise across a wide range of subjects at conferences worldwide, from Singapore to the Netherlands and Canada. Her research interests include motivation, self-regulation, and mental health interventions. Sook is collaborating with STRIPED on a number of research projects, including estimating prevalence rates of eating disorders in Singapore and Malaysia, and disordered weight control behaviors, cosmetic surgery and use of skin lightening products in Asia. As an eating disorders specialist and renowned mental health advocate, Sook has been a sought-after speaker over the past 10 years, appearing on radio and in print media, as well as delivering three TEDx Talks since 2017. A clinician who practices in Singapore and Malaysia, Sook is recognized as a driven and determined thought leader in psychology throughout Southeast Asia, motivated by a desire to raise the standard of mental health on an individual, organizational, and societal level. She is also an Adrian Cheng Fellow at the Harvard Center for Public Leadership’s Social Innovation and Change Initiative (SICI). Sook also received the 2022 New World Social Innovation Fellowship, given by the Social Innovation Change Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership!
Nadia Craddock is a Research Fellow at the Center for Appearance Research at the University of the West of England, where she is exploring whether and under what conditions the fashion, beauty, and advertising industries can foster positive body image. She seeks to understand how body image impacts those who work in these industries, as well as the opportunities for and challenges to fostering positive body image in their work. During her time with STRIPED, Nadia delved into STRIPED’s research studies related to the fashion industry and its educational and legislative initiatives on dietary supplements, UV tanning, and skin bleaching to help inform her future investigative partnerships. Nadia collaborated with STRIPED on various projects during the fall of 2018 and spring of 2019.
Chloe Gao is an MD/PhD student at the University of British Columbia. Building on her work experience in mental health and substance use services in Canada and Australia, she is embarking on her doctoral research to integrate the perspectives of diverse communities of young people into mental health service redesign. As a visiting scholar with STRIPED for the 2023-24 academic year, Chloe will be focusing on co-designing culturally safe strategies for engaging Asian American and Canadian youth aged 16-25 years old in eating disorders prevention research, clinical care, and policymaking.
Monica Henderson (she/her) received her Master in Public Health (MPH) in Community and Behavioral Health Sciences and Certificate in Health Equity from the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health. As a health justice scholar, her interests center on child health and racial equity. The aim of any of her work is to examine the relationship between systemic oppression, liberation, and life outcomes. She currently works as a program and outreach coordinator at Pitt’s Center for Race and Social Problems – Race and Youth Development Research group. Henderson’s master’s thesis examined Black hair politics as a public health concern for Black women and girls. She also provided written testimony to the Massachusetts legislature to support their CROWN (Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair) Act and is continuing to do work around afro-textured hair empowerment with individuals in Pittsburgh. Monica collaborates with STRIPED as a consultant on their new CROWN Act Advocacy Impact Study.
Dr. Iyiola Solanke is the Jacques Delors Chair of EU Law at Oxford University. Previously, she was a Professor in the School of Law at the University of Leeds, where she holds the Chair in EU Law and Social Justice. She sits on the General Council of International Society of Public Law and is an Associate of the Centre of Intersectional Justice.
Iyiola is interested in exploring how anti-weight discrimination law impacts the lived experience of weight stigma for those in larger bodies and has been working with legislators and advocates to examine the impact of such legislation. She comes to STRIPED to share ideas and collaborate with other researchers with the broader aim of identifying legal pathways to effectively protect this stigmatized group. Iyiola was a STRIPED Visiting Scholar in the summer of 2018 and will be back in August of 2019.
Check out Iyiola’s TEDxLondon talk, Can we eradicate discrimination if we view it as a virus?
Trine Tetlie Eik-Nes is an Associate Professor at Department of Neuroscience and Behavioral Medicine at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). She completed a MSc at the Regional Centre for Child and Youth Mental Health and Child Welfare at NTNU. She completed her PhD in Public Health at NTNU in 2018. She works with both registry data and clinical data on eating disorders. Eik-Nes has worked in the mental health sector for 20 years as a clinician and a researcher with a special interest in adult psychopathology. For the last 12 years, she has worked with eating disorders. Her research interests are eating disorders, children at higher weights, body image and stigma. In 2008, she initiated and developed a treatment program for parents and their families with eating disorders at Levanger Hospital. She has also led several projects in the mental health sector concerning physical health in patients with mental disorders. During a 6-month visit at the Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School in 2016, and a research stay in Australia in 2018, she gained important experience in the conduction of studies on disordered eating. She is currently the Principal Investigator of the nation-wide MHOBY Study (Mental Health & Obesity) in Norway and is currently working with development and testing of integrated treatment for patients with binge eating disorders (BED). Moreover, she is involved in several clinical and epidemiological studies concerning eating disorders.
Staff
STRIPED Program Manager
Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital
jill.kavanaugh@childrens.harvard.edu
Jill is a published scholar with a BA in Media, Information, and Technoculture from Western University in Ontario, Canada, and a Master of Library and Information Science, specializing in health sciences librarianship, alongside a certificate in writing, all from Western. She has also studied health literacy at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and is a member of the Academy of Health Information Professionals (AHIP). Jill’s primary research interests revolve around social media’s impact on the health and well-being of adolescents, especially in the realm of body image, coupled with a focus on media literacy. Additionally, Jill is passionate about legislation advocacy concerning big tech’s influence on social media and its potential impact on public health. Her dedication extends to researching health-related topics, such as knowledge translation, health literacy, and embedded librarianship.
STRIPED Program Coordinator
Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital
abigail.bulens@childrens.harvard.edu
Abbie is a recent graduate with a BA in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research interests include the impact and influence of social media on the facilitation and development of eating disorders, and eating disorder treatment outcomes for different diagnoses. Additionally, she is interested in investigating the co-morbidity of various psychological disorders and eating disorders.
Collaborating Mentors
Dr. Jerel Calzo is a developmental psychologist, Professor in Health Promotion and Behavioral Science at San Diego State University School of Public Health, and a Core Investigator at the Institute for Behavioral and Community Health, where he directs the Action Research on Community Health Equity and Stigma (ARCHES) Lab (arches.sdsu.edu). Dr. Calzo’s research delineates the developmental course of health disparities connected to gender, sexual orientation, and other social determinants of health (e.g., housing), and identifies mechanisms that interventionists can leverage in strategic contexts to promote health and positive social development among adolescents and young adults. His work on body image and eating disorders focuses on advancing health equity among understudied and underserved populations, including boys and men and LGBTQ+ populations. He received his PhD from the University of Michigan and MPH from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Professor Costello teaches Research, Writing and Advocacy from an Intellectual Property Law Perspective and teaches student clinicians in the MSU First Amendment Law Clinic. She has also taught Media Law, Copyright Law, and Intellectual Property in the Internet Age. Before joining the law college she practiced in the area of commercial litigation, defamation law, ebusiness law and collections litigation for the law firm of Dickinson Wright PLLC in Detroit. She received her bachelor’s degree in journalism from Michigan State University, and earned her Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law where she served as an editor of the Law Review and president of the Women’s Law Caucus. Professor Costello is a crucial component of STRIPED’s work on the development of legislation to protect youth from the dangers of social media.
Dr. Allegra Gordon is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at Boston University School of Public Health. She received her MPH in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University and her doctorate in Social & Behavioral Sciences with a concentration in Women, Gender, and Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. In her research Dr. Gordon uses quantitative and qualitative methods to understand the mental and physical health impacts of discrimination and the effects of gender socialization and gender norms on the health of young people across sexual orientations and gender identities. She is funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse to study how changes in the social and policy environment relate to substance use and health-related quality of life among sexual minorities. Recent projects have included research on weight stigma among sexual minority young adults and a study of gender expression, peer victimization, and eating disorders symptoms among U.S. high school students. In collaboration with The Fenway Institute, she has conducted qualitative research on body image and weight control behaviors among low-income transgender women. She is currently working on an exploratory study on appearance ideals and body image concerns among LGBTQ college students and on a pilot study examining the role of intimate partnerships in relation to body image and sexual health among transgender and non-binary young adults.
Lingbo Liu is a Research Associate at the Center for Geographic Analysis (CGA), leading the Spatial Data Lab project. His work focuses on developing advanced Geospatial AI (GeoAI) models and an open-source visual programming platform to drive geospatial research and democratize geospatial data science. Previously, he was a CGA postdoctoral research fellow, a tenured lecturer in the Department of Urban Planning at Wuhan University. His research centers on healthy cities, with a particular focus on the unequal health impacts of environmental exposure. By leveraging GeoAI, big data analytics, and network analysis, he examines how spatial inequalities emerge and persist in urban systems, shaping public health outcomes. His work aims to uncover the mechanisms of spatial justice, providing insights that support more equitable spatial policies and actions to address contested spaces, mitigate health disparities, and promote healthier, more sustainable urban environments.
Dr. Michael Long is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Prevention and Community Health at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at The George Washington University. He conducts research at the intersection of obesity epidemiology and quantitative policy analysis, with the goal of identifying cost-effective and politically feasible policy solutions to the obesity epidemic. He is currently working on the CHOICES (Childhood Obesity Intervention Cost-Effectiveness Study) team led by Steven Gortmaker, evaluating the cost-effectiveness of more than 40 policy and programmatic approaches to prevent childhood obesity in the United States. Previously, Dr. Long mentored Brown University MPH student Esther Li and is now working STRIPED trainee Cindy Hu to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of six unique strategies designed for eating disorders prevention and early detection. Dr. Long earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in politics from Princeton University and a Master of Public Health degree from Yale, where he worked at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. He earned his Doctor of Science degree from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Social and Behavioral Sciences, and completed a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Harvard focusing on obesity epidemiology and cost-effectiveness analysis.
Rachel Plummer is the Director of Programs and Public Policy at Cambridge Economic Opportunity Committee (CEOC), the Cambridge’s designated anti-poverty community action agency. In this role, she advocates for policies to end poverty and hunger and promote equity, as well as providing support to CEOC’s programs. Rachel received her Master of Public Health in Nutrition from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from William and Mary. With STRIPED, she has been leading advocacy efforts in Massachusetts to ban body size discrimination, including, liaising with community partners across the state and country, and mentoring high school students in gaining experience and building skills for legislative advocacy to ban body size discrimination.
Dr. Raffoul is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto. She received her MSc and PhD from the School of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo. Dr. Raffoul joined STRIPED as a postdoctoral fellow in 2020, funded by a three-year Canadian Institutes of Health Research Fellowship, where she worked on several projects that examined policy approaches to prevent eating disorders, ranging from government policy to social media regulation. Her multi- and mixed-methods research aims to investigate and promote the uptake of evidence-based policies to prevent eating disorders and promote healthy dietary patterns among populations. In collaboration with national and international organizations, she collaborates on knowledge dissemination and legislative advocacy efforts to regulate social media misinformation related to weight and nutrition, ban the sale of harmful weight-loss and muscle-building pills to minors, and prohibit weight discrimination. In collaboration with affected communities, her current research aims to explore the differential impacts of nutrition policy on disordered eating risk and examine avenues through which youth engagement in knowledge translation may impact decision-makers’ use of research evidence in nutrition policy.
Dr. Kendrin Sonneville is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and is a Collaborating Mentor for the Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders (STRIPED). Dr. Sonneville is a registered dietitian, behavioral scientist, and public health researcher whose research is focused on the prevention of eating disorders. The goal of her research program is to understand how to “help without harming,” specifically, how to best promote health and nutrition among youth without inadvertently increasing body dissatisfaction, weight stigma, preoccupation with food and weight, and disordered eating. Dr. Sonneville received a Bachelor of Science in Nutritional Sciences and a Bachelor of Science in Dietetics from Michigan State University, a Master of Science in Human Nutrition from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, and Doctor of Science in Public Health Nutrition from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Sonneville is the former Director of Nutrition Training in the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Health at Boston Children’s Hospital and was the co-director of STRIPED for several years, providing mentorship to numerous trainees and spearheading STRIPED’s new line of research and training in cost-effectiveness analysis of eating disorders preventive interventions.
Dr. Alvin Tran is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Administration and Policy, and Assistant Provost for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the University of New Haven in Connecticut. His research focuses on the intersection of body image, disordered eating behaviors, health policy, and racial and sexual minority health. At the University of New Haven, Dr. Tran leads the WeEmbody (or WE) Lab, which is a research working group of public health professionals and students. Dr. Tran is a member of the Academy for Eating Disorders and currently serves as a co-chair for the organization’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee. He is an advocate for the prevention of eating disorders and was the 2018 recipient of the SPARK Impact Award for Activism and Issue Advocacy by the City of Boston. Dr. Tran is also the recipient of the 2023 Karen Denard Goldman Health Education Mentor Award from the Society for Public Health Education.
Cynthia A. Tschampl, PhD, is a Scientist at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University. With nearly 25 years’ experience in U.S. and global health, her career began with a focus on policy and advocacy, including work in South Africa, Colombia, and Haiti. Dr. Tschampl enjoys quantitative and qualitative research and specializes in economic evaluations such as cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analyses.
Dr. Tschampl has collaborated with the STRIPED team on several economic evaluations of public policy interventions aimed at restricting the sale of diet pills and muscle-building supplements to minors. As part of this collaboration, she has mentored multiple STRIPED fellows, guiding them in research methodologies related to cost-effectiveness and, more recently, distributional cost-effectiveness analyses. The latter provides insights into equity concerns as well as economics.
Her research interests include prevention and control of infectious diseases (including healthcare financing), substance use disorder responses, services for people experiencing homelessness, health inequities, eating disorders, and quality measurement. A member of the Massachusetts Medical Advisory Committee for the Elimination of Tuberculosis since 2004, she received the National TB Controller Association’s Charles DeGraw TB Award for outstanding service in 2011 and was elected Chair-Elect of Stop TB USA in 2021, becoming Chair in 2023.
Dr. Davene Wright is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at University of Washington and an Investigator in the Center for Child Health, Behavior, and Development at the Seattle Children’s Research Institute. She completed her PhD in Health Policy and Decision Sciences at Harvard University. Previously, Dr. Wright worked with STRIPED trainees Yushan Jiang and Hyungi LeAnn Noh to carry out what may have been the first-ever U.S. cost-effectiveness study of eating disorders screening. Now, Dr. Wright is collaborating on a new cost-effectiveness analysis study of six unique strategies designed for eating disorders prevention and early detection. Dr. Wright is interested in how stakeholders (be they patients, providers, or healthcare payers) make decisions about the use and allocation of healthcare resources and how they can make better decisions in the presence of uncertainty, complexity, and competing values. This field draws upon health economics, psychology, and epidemiology, among other disciplines. Her research focuses on the supply and demand of effective and efficient healthcare for children with obesity.
International Expert Advisory Panel
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).
Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, PhD, MPH, RD, is Mayo Professor and Division Head in the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota. Dr. Neumark-Sztainer’s research focuses on a broad spectrum of eating and weight-related outcomes including eating disorders, unhealthy weight control behaviors, body image, dietary intake, weight stigmatization, and obesity. She is dedicated to ensuring that her research has a positive impact on the health of the public, particularly our most vulnerable populations. She leads an active program of research and recently received an Outstanding Investigator Award from the National Institutes of Health to fund her work. Dr. Neumark-Sztainer has published nearly 500 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals and a book for parents of adolescents entitled: “I’m, like, SO, fat!” Helping your teen make healthy choices about eating and exercise in a weight-obsessed world. Her research has been recognized with awards from the Academy for Eating Disorders, the National Eating Disorders Association, and the Eating Disorders Coalition.
Dr. Paxton is a professor in the School of Psychology and Public Health at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. She has been a leading researcher in the field of body dissatisfaction and eating disorders prevention for two decades, contributing to our understanding of body image and eating disorders in a range of populations including children, adolescents, young adults, pregnant and post-partum women, women in midlife, and older men and women. Her research has contributed to the development of effective prevention and early intervention programs for body image and eating problems. Dr. Paxton has been President of both the Australian and New Zealand Academy for Eating Disorders and the Academy for Eating Disorders, the leading eating disorders professional organization in the world. In 2013, she received the Academy for Eating Disorder’s Leadership Award for Research. In addition, Dr. Paxton has served on numerous Australian government advisory bodies and is a Director of the Butterfly Foundation, Australia’s national advocacy organization for people affected by eating disorders.
Teaching Case Team
Eric Weinberger is a Cambridge, Massachusetts, writer working with STRIPED on our teaching case series set in the fictional U.S. state of Columbia. In addition to working with STRIPED, he has written teaching cases for the Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science on the pioneering work of health care organizations nationwide on matters of clinical practice and delivery, including shared decision making and the reorganization of primary care. Having graduated magna cum laude from Yale University with a degree in history, he spent eight years teaching expository writing at Harvard College and has published nearly 100 essays, op-eds, book reviews, travel articles, vignettes, and fiction pieces for leading U.S. and British newspapers and literary journals.
Former Team Members
- Jennifer Pomeranz, JD, MPH
- Katherine Record, JD, MPH, MA
- Mihail Samnaliev. PhD
See here for a list of former trainees.
- Jess Haines, PhD, MHSc, RD
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