Eating Disorder Interventions
A podcast calling on high schools to provide eating disorder programming in school to reduce the number of adolescents, especially adolescent girls, who develop eating disorders.
In the U.S., 30 million people are estimated to suffer from an eating disorder, and many more display the warning signs of developing one. Eating disorders are most common in individuals in their late teens and early twenties, especially among females. High schools have a unique opportunity to expose this at-risk demographic to educational programming and interventions, yet a vast majority of incoming college students are receiving no such programming. This podcast calls on high school administrations to do more to prevent eating disorders and their associated health consequences, offering two suggested interventions that may help schools address this problem.
Artist
Abigail Huebner (2020)
Artist Lens
After researching eating disorders, I learned that adolescent girls (from their teens until their low twenties) are at the highest risk of developing eating disorders. I was therefore shocked to read a study that the vast majority of incoming college freshmen have had no exposure to eating disorder programming, and I decided that this was a crucial mental health issue to tackle. Specifically, I want to change this statistic—if these girls are at the highest risk of developing eating disorders, and there exist easy-to-implement and successful interventions, then high schoolers, specifically girls, should be exposed to these interventions. To tackle this issue, I decided to focus on high school administration—it is important that these interventions are done on an institutional level. An individual student is not able to provide herself with the type of intervention that can be helpful and would likely not even know that she can benefit from such an intervention. Because I am targeting the administrations of high schools, I decided a podcast, which feels more academic and information-based than an image or a video, was the correct medium. The format I chose was a simple framing of the issue, why people should care, and what can be done about it, with questions to draw listeners in and keep them engaged—I thought this was most appropriate for my intended audience.
Media
Audio