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.
Welcome to STRIPED
Why STRIPED? Why Now?
Eating disorders and disordered weight control behaviors present a significant threat to the health of adolescents and adults, yet they remain largely overlooked by public health and preventive medicine professionals. To address this critical need, we launched the Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders in July 2009, based at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Boston Children’s Hospital, with the goal of building a transdisciplinary training initiative that will generate professionals with the depth and range of expertise and skills needed to take on the challenge of eating disorders prevention.
A Public Health Incubator
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.
About STRIPED
The STRIPED team has conducted research on the cost effectiveness of eating disorder screening, abuse of over-the-counter products for weight control and muscle-building, the impacts of social media on adolescent mental health, and more. These research projects have fueled a variety of advocacy campaigns, from removing digitally altered images from advertisements, to introducing an excise tax on over-the-counter diet pills, to banning the sale of diet pills and muscle supplements to minors—which, thanks in part to STRIPED advocacy, in 2023 became law in New York state.
Students across Harvard Chan School as well as other institutions have the opportunity to participate in this research and its related advocacy and policy translation efforts. STRIPED trainees receive funding and mentorship to engage in research projects that help them develop their content and methodological expertise around eating disorder prevention. Additionally, STRIPED makes many of its training resources available to the general public. Online, all health and school professionals can attend STRIPED trainings on topics such as dietary supplements and body confident schools. And anyone can access STRIPED research reports as well as its curriculum of case studies designed to engage students in real-world dilemmas, problem-solving, and teamwork around high-impact issues in eating disorder prevention.