Eating Disorders Prevention: An Effectiveness Trial for At-Risk College Students

Threshold and subthreshold eating disorders affect over 10% of young women and are
associated with functional impairment, distress, psychiatric comorbidity, medical
complications, mortality, and risk for obesity onset. Accordingly, a pressing public healthy
priority is to develop effective prevention programs for eating pathology. The proposed
project will be the first effectiveness trial to test whether an eating disorder prevention
program with strong empirical support from efficacy trials produces effects under
ecologically valid conditions among high-risk female college students, which is a vital step
toward widespread dissemination of programs developed with NIH funding. The proposed
cost-effectiveness analyses and examination of process factors that predict larger
intervention effects will also represent novel contributions to the literature.

Inclusion Criteria:

- (1) is a registered student at a participating school, (2) self-reports body image
concerns

Exclusion Criteria:

- meets DSM-IV criteria for anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, or binge eating disorder