Family Interventions for Eating Disorders in Youth through Telehealth

“The Ginger Doyel Honorary AIM Grant”

AIM has funded two coordinated telehealth family intervention studies under the AIM Beyond COVID Research Fund. $70,000 to Dr. Walter H. Kaye of UCSD and $50,000 to Dr. James Lock of Stanford University. The study will include two projects focused on the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary clinical utility of telehealth to deliver family interventions for eating disorders in youth. The UCSD project will focus on multi-family support for patients in treatment while the Stanford University project will focus on the online self-help family interventions for patients/families awaiting treatment. Both projects will have common outcome measures to assess feasibility, acceptability and clinical change.

“COVID has made it much more difficult for those with eating disorders to find treatment. The intent of this proposal is to extend our evidence-based treatments using telemedicine to people in their homes. Moreover, we are incorporating new approaches that may result in more successful outcomes.” -Dr. Kaye

“With the pandemic we have seen a spike in eating disorders in youth, and the gap between availability of therapeutic resources and need, which was already large and has become a chasm. For example, our own referral list for initial evaluation has increased significantly. I have heard that this is occurring in eating disorder treatment centers across the US and around the world. While it is evident that we need to increase the overall clinical workforce to treat youth with eating disorders, we also need to provide help to those who are waiting for care. This study funded by AIM will allow us to begin to address this growing need through developing and evaluating online self-help strategies for parents who need help while they are waiting for care.” -Dr. Lock