The Program support research projects about eating disorders and promotes the ongoing evaluation of treatment services. Our goal is to ensure that patients and their families continue to receive the highest possible standard of care, and to increase our understanding of these disorders in children and adolescents.
We are conducting a joint study with the BC Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health on the prevalence of smoking among our patients, their levels of nicotine dependence, stages of change with respect to smoking cessation, and the barriers to change in adolescents with eating disorders. A part of this research is to consider the appropriateness of implementing a smoking cessation project in the ED program and what the intervention should ideally be based on.
We are conducting a clinical project with the Department of Cardiology at Children’s to evaluate the cardiac function of patients when they enter our intensive treatment service (Day Treatment Program). One of the measures taken is the patient’s heart function during an exercise stress test using a bicycle ergometre. This information will enable us to better understand the physiology of the heart in adolescents with eating disorders and give us a sense of the effects of exercise on our patients.