InsideOut Institute led the development of Australia’s first National Eating Disorder Research & Translation Strategy. was developed through a national consultation and collaboration process with key stakeholders, eating disorder organisations, people with a lived experience and their families/carers. When fully implemented its key strategic priorities and areas for action will transform the eating disorder landscape – supporting eating disorder research and the translation of research into real world prevention, early intervention and treatment across community and practice settings nationally.

The Clinical Decision Support Tool for General Practitioners is a digital innovation at ‘point of care’ to assist GPs in screening and care planning for people who present with the early signs of an emerging eating disorder. This timesaving tool, developed in consultation with doctors and people with a lived experience, will use a diagnostic algorithm to facilitate speedy identification, deliver evidence-based information and care planning advice to GPs to help them link clients to treatment providers.

InsideOut is developing Toolkit of evidence-based eTherapy resources that can be used in a self-help or guided self-help model, and provide brief, individualised evidence-based treatments to those with early stage eating disorders. Our aim is to partner to embed these in mainstream health pathways and ensure that more people access treatment that works early, to avoid the progression into more severe illness.

The federal government funded 5000 places for clinicians across Australia to complete InsideOut’s Essentials eLearning program – upskilling the primary care and public health workforce to intervene early and provide evidence-based treatment across the system. Medicare providers, headspace clinicians and GPs were all targets. We have partnered with all jurisdictions across Australia to ensure training is distributed equitably across the national workforce. Increasing the number of practitioners with foundational knowledge of eating disorders will improve the health system’s response and increase access to appropriate care.

We will scope and develop a national minimum dataset for eating disorders and scope the different digital information options for the collection of that data at the point of care and its use for both clinical impact and research evaluation of care. This project will be guided by experts in the field, service providers and governments. Consideration will be given to existing data collection processes.

Evidenced based service provision and treatment, and breaking down stigma, requires good information about the population at risk of developing or living with an eating disorder. This project will scope the feasibility of making eating disorders a notifiable diagnosis and a national registry that gathers data from a range of sources. It will be conducted in collaboration with experts in the field, service providers and government.