InformED: The Next Chapter in Eating Disorder Care

By: Akiera Gilbert, Chief Executive Officer, Project HEAL

Project HEAL’s mission is to break down systemic, healthcare, and financial barriers to eating disorder treatment, ensuring everyone has the resources they need to heal. We are the only national nonprofit providing free, equitable access to care in an effort to reach the 80% of individuals unable to access eating disorder (ED) treatment. With generous support from the Scattergood Foundation, we launched InformED: Identity-Affirming Clinician Training for Eating Disorder Care—an innovative program designed to fill critical gaps in eating disorder expertise among clinicians serving marginalized communities. Our goals were clear: increase provider diversity, deliver culturally responsive care, and ensure more underserved individuals access timely support. Despite major shifts in the behavioral healthcare landscape this past year, we’ve made meaningful strides toward a future where early, affirming eating disorder care is standard rather than the exception.

The Urgent Need
Today, fewer than 10% of individuals diagnosed with an eating disorder ever receive treatment. EDs impact people across all identities, backgrounds, and body types, yet they’re disproportionately overlooked in communities facing systemic barriers to healthcare. Further, eating disorder training is scarce as fewer than 1% of mental health providers specialize in EDs, largely due to  limited training available in traditional graduate and medical programs.

Building a Pipeline for Lasting Change
When we first launched InformED in 2024, our ambition was to train 150 clinicians primarily serving BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ communities. Although we directly trained 49 clinicians – falling short of our original target – we expanded our reach significantly through the InformED Forum, a virtual conference that engaged an additional 321 mental health professionals eager for practical ED screening and intervention tools and education. One of our strongest successes was clinician engagement during the national pilot, with most trainees based in Philadelphia and New York. Clinicians who completed InformED significantly improved their ability to identify culturally-specific eating disorder risks (as average scores rose from 2.1 to 4.6 out of 5), while their confidence in assessing symptoms and planning care increased by three points on average. Notably, 100% of trainees identify as BIPOC, and over 60% as LGBTQIA+, directly broadening representation in a fairly homogeneous field. During program evaluation, we discovered the core issue for our initial outreach efforts: solo clinicians were overwhelmed with caseloads and limited resources, and found it difficult to prioritize ED training without institutional support. To address this, we pivoted in 2025 toward direct partnerships with virtual mental health clinics and smaller ED treatment centers, providing tailored mini-trainings that fit seamlessly into their workflows. This shift from training individuals to strengthening larger care systems has significantly increased our reach and sustainability, as we’ve reached hundreds of clinicians thus far in 2025.

Participants continue to benefit from free clinical consultation groups, access to our extensive provider network for patient referrals, and ongoing educational resources for up to a year post-training. Our upcoming evaluation efforts will focus on clinician follow-up reports regarding how they’re integrating new skills into daily practice, ongoing use of resources, and the tangible impact on patient care outcomes. Last Fall, Project HEAL reached a critical milestone: our clinical assessments were integrated into SBIRT-ED – the first eating disorder screener funded and supported by SAMHSA. Now, patients identified as high-risk immediately receive access to our free, virtual clinical assessments, thereby eliminating high costs and long waitlists. We recognize the immediate challenges facing behavioral healthcare, as institutions nationwide grapple with unprecedented resource constraints that disproportionately affect the communities we aim to heal. At the same time, demand for ED care is surging. In the past six months alone, Project HEAL has received twice as many applications for free ED treatment as any previous period in our 17-year history. Despite these barriers, we remain committed to designing systems that uplift underserved communities, as it ultimately benefits everyone.

Moving Forward: Scaling Our Impact
With increased funding, we aim to launch Phase II of InformED, expanding our program nationally and directly integrating ED competencies into primary care, the place where most eating disorders first go unnoticed. By equipping medical providers with practical tools, targeted training, and institutional support, we can connect those struggling in silence directly to InformED-trained clinicians and our national provider network without overburdening primary care teams. In doing so, we can spark a powerful cycle of early intervention and scale our field’s capacity to reach the 27 million people who otherwise might never access the care they deserve. The future of our work will require adaptation, resilience, and coalition-building. As we look forward, we recognize the challenges ahead. But the opportunity we have right now to transform the landscape of eating disorder care (especially for those historically overlooked) is too important to ignore.