Dr Elizabeth Evans, Durham University: Body Image and Eating Disorders

Dr Elizabeth Evans will talk about Intervening to improve body image & reduce eating disorder risk: diversification of interventions across cultures, contexts & risk factors

Abstract: Eating disorders are serious, long-term mental health conditions affecting a growing proportion of adolescents and young adults (Newlove-Delgado et al., 2023). Approximately 80% of those affected do not receive treatment, and relapse is common. Developing and implementing effective eating disorder prevention programmes should therefore be a public health priority. However, the current research base in eating disorder prevention draws primarily on selective, high-risk samples of North American women and girls.
In this talk, I will discuss my research, which aims to diversify eating disorder prevention interventions across new cultures, contexts, and populations, incorporating a wider range of causal risk factors and pushing theoretical boundaries. I will focus first on BiRES, our ongoing ERC-funded project that aims to develop interventions to support body image resilience and prevent eating disorders in culturally diverse low- and middle-income country contexts.
Next, I will consider whether interventions that do not explicitly reference body image or eating behaviours can nevertheless reduce eating disorder risk, and I will present data testing this proposition. Finally, I will share qualitative findings that raise the question of whether we may need a radically different approach to eating disorder prevention for neurodivergent communities. I will conclude by reflecting on the theoretical and methodological challenges and rewards of attempting to diversify interventions in this research area.

Dr Evans is an Associate Professor of Behavioural Science at Durham University. She previously worked at Newcastle University, first at the Population Health Sciences Institute (2013-17) and then as a lecturer in the School of Psychology (2017-21). I obtained my PhD from Durham University in 2013. Further details of her publications and research interests can be found here https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/elizabeth-evans/.

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