2 - (SYM 103) Family-based Treatment for Primary Care: Improving Access to Care for Adolescents and Children with Restrictive Eating Disorders

Nationwide, there are only 68 certified providers of Family-Based Treatment (FBT), the first-line treatment for adolescent eating disorders. The insufficient number of trained providers does not come close to meeting the needs of the estimated 12-15% children and adolescents who suffer from these illnesses. Given robust data linking early intervention to positive prognoses for eating disorders, reducing this treatment-access disparity is of urgent concern. Primary care providers (PCPs) play a vital role in the care of young patients with eating disorders. The responsibilities of the PCP in standard eating disorder treatment typically include case identification, referral, and medical management. Although PCPs have vast experience empowering caregivers to help their children change behavior, this expertise has not been applied to supporting caregivers in facilitating weight restoration. Because the PCP is often the first point of contact for patients with eating disorders, with the majority of patients with eating disorders reporting they solely receive care from their PCP, this narrow role represents a missed opportunity. Equipping PCPs to deliver evidence-based treatment for restrictive eating disorders has potential to expand access to early intervention and improve outcomes. As such, we will describe our work using an Integrated Behavioral Health model to develop our novel treatment that borrows from FBT, delivered by PCPs in the primary care setting (Family-Based Treatment for Primary Care [FBT-PC]). We have established, through proof-of-concept studies, that FBT-PC is feasible and has a large effect on weight restoration- a prerequisite for eating disorder recovery- in pediatric patients. Further, young patients achieve these results after spending significantly less time in treatment (Mean = 366.3 minutes; SD = 181) than those in standard FBT (Mean = 668.7 minutes, SD = 301). Finally, we will present data which suggest that embedding eating disorder treatment in primary care may reach a more racially and socioeconomically diverse group of adolescents, earlier in the course of their illness as compared to those seen in specialty practice. Future directions for expanding on this model to continue to increase the reach of evidence-based eating disorder intervention will be discussed.