New Leadership for Eating Disorders Treatment Facilitators Task Force

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Feb 21, 2024, 13:58 ET

PEKIN, Ill., Feb. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals (iaedp™) has two new leaders of the Eating Disorders Treatment Facilitator (EDTF) Task Force: Angela Storck-Peterson, MPH, MS, RD, LDN, CEDS, and Kimberly Cover, Kimberly Wright Cover, MS, LPC, RD, CEDS-C, CSSD, LDN.

The EDTF Task Force was developed to connect primary care medical providers with experienced eating disorders professionals to help treat their patients in early identification, assessment and treatment. Knowing that most eating disorder patients enter the health care system with their primary care professional first and that many of those PCPs do not have an experienced colleague to turn to for advice, frontline medical providers frequently miss eating disorder diagnoses.

"Often within large health systems, behavioral health services, such as feeding and eating disorder treatment, there is a lack of knowledge, resources, and/or specialists advocating for quality feeding and eating disorder care," said Storck-Peterson, who has worked in behavioral health care for the past ten years in all levels of care in acute psychiatric inpatient hospitalization for primary co-occurring disorders. "I believe with the support of iaedp, the EDTF Task Force can join other organizations with similar interests in changing the narrative related to quality behavioral health care."

The EDTF Task Force seeks to educate and empower eating disorder clinicians to move beyond quality clinical patient care to also competently and confidently communicate, collaborate, advocate, and educate within the health system and medical community to improve feeding and eating disorder care.

Key EDTF Task Force services are:

Specialized education in screening and recognizing early signs of eating disorders.
Sourcing eating disorders professionals to aid with thorough evaluations.
Referrals for patients to a multidisciplinary team of professionals for comprehensive care.
Assisting in effective communication between patients, their families, healthcare teams and referring professionals.

"My mission is to partner with healthcare professionals to facilitate patient treatment," said Cover, who has worked with fitness professionals and medical providers for over 24 years. "Clinicians are key in early identification and treatment of patients with disordered eating, excessive exercise, as well as eating disorders. For example, sports physicals provide just one of many opportunities for identification in primary care. Unfortunately, in this environment, they often lack the education and resources for early identification, assessment and treatment."

Learn more here.

SOURCE iaedp Foundation