B1. Collaborating For Change: Tackling Weight Stigma In Treatment

Presenter: Julie Sweeney

Description: Weight stigma remains one of the most significant barriers to effective and compassionate eating disorder care. Despite best intentions, treatment approaches often reinforce harmful biases that prevent individuals from receiving the support they deserve. In this interactive workshop, we will explore the impact of weight stigma on clients, clinicians, and treatment outcomes, and consider how collaborative, weight-inclusive approaches can transform care across the country. Drawing from over 12 years of lived and professional experience in the field, I will share stories, reflections, and practical strategies that highlight both the harm caused by weight stigma and the opportunities for change. Participants will be invited to engage in discussion, reflection, and practice exercises that support awareness, empathy, and action. Together, we will explore how to build treatment environments that are equitable, inclusive, and effective from coast to coast.

B2. Dear Body, Across The Sea: Healing Body Image Through Collaboration

Presenter: Rebecca Carley

Description: In keeping with the conference theme of collaboration, this interactive 90-minute workshop explores how reflective letter-writing can bridge nutritional therapy and counselling in supporting body image healing. Participants will engage in short reflective exercises comparing how they describe a loved one with how they describe themselves, followed by guided writing of a “Dear Body” letter to deepen compassion and awareness. Brief framing introduces how nutritional therapy and counselling each offer complementary perspectives, one supporting physical nourishment and balance, the other fostering emotional safety and reflection. Approximately 15 minutes will be devoted to framing, 60 minutes to experiential and discussion activities, and 15 minutes to integration and closing. Designed to be inclusive and accessible, the session honours diverse body experiences and lived perspectives while exploring shared learning between UK and Canadian practitioners. This reflective workshop is not therapy but offers a safe, contained space for exploration.

B3. Navigating Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Agonists In Eating Disorder Care

Presenters: Sara Bartel & Aaron Keshen

Description: Glucagon-like peptide-1 agonists (GLP-1As) are increasingly being discussed and researched within the eating disorder field. Due to the nascent and evolving nature of the literature, eating disorder clinicians are often unsure how these medications work and how to effectively discuss these medications with clients. The proposed workshop will provide an overview of GLP-1A medications (10 minutes), outline current research and consensus guidelines on eating disorders and GLP-1As (15 minutes), discuss potential negative impacts of GLP-1As on eating disorder treatment (10 minutes), and provide practical information about speaking with eating disorder clients about GLP-1As (15 minutes). Active learning techniques to be used in workshop include live polling of clinician experience and knowledge (10 minutes) and several breakout discussions (30 minutes). Participants will leave this workshop with a an up to date understanding about GLP-1As and eating disorders, as well as a guide for discussing these medications with clients experiencing eating disorders.

B4. Empowering Recovery €“ The Evidence And Experience Behind Peer Support

Presenters: Shaleen Jones & Gina Dimitropoulos

Description: Peer support is recognized as a critical service enhancing engagement across the continuum of care from emergency departments to community-based organizations.   Guided by their lived experience, peer supports provide emotional, practical and social support and meet individuals where they are at in their eating disorder journey, decreasing isolation, and enhancing motivation and readiness for change. Peer supporters can play a pivotal role in supporting individual while they wait for specialized services, compliment traditional care and provide system navigation across different sectors.

In this workshop, we will identify the best and emerging practices for delivering peer support for those impacted by eating disorders and in different contexts. Finally, we will learn about the Peer Support model delivered by Eating Disorder Nova Scotia, including their training model and lessons learned on how to deliver effective peer support for those living with eating disorder and their families.

C1. Navigating The Psychedelic Frontier: What Is The Therapeutic Potential Of Psilocybin Treatment For Eating Disorders?

Presenter: Elena Koning

Description: There is emerging transdiagnostic evidence for the therapeutic potential of psychedelic treatments in psychiatry, including preliminary evidence of safety and effectiveness in eating disorders (ED). Several clinical trials are underway investigating psychedelic treatments for EDs, however, the field is challenged by study design limitations and regulatory barriers. Moreover, psychedelics pose unique safety concerns for EDs that are yet to be addressed in conventional psychedelic treatment protocols. To educate clinicians and researchers on this emerging field, this workshop will explore the present and future of psychedelics in ED treatment, focusing on neurobiology, phenomenology, current evidence, and our protocol for the first randomized controlled trial testing psilocybin treatment as an adjunct to cognitive behavioural therapy for bulimia nervosa. This session is designed for clinicians, researchers, and trainees, and incorporates both didactic (45min) and interactive (45min) learning components to cultivate an understanding of the rapidly evolving landscape of psychedelics in ED treatment.

C2. Harbouring Change: MED-DBT And Collaborative Contingency Management For EDs

Presenter: Anita Federici

Description: Collaboration lies at the heart of effective treatment for complex eating disorders (EDs), within teams, across systems of care, and between providers and patients. Drawing from the Multidiagnostic Eating Disorder – Dialectical Behavior Therapy (MED-DBT) model, this interactive workshop explores how collaborative contingency management (CM) can anchor treatment teams and enhance therapeutic outcomes across levels of care. 

Contingency management (CM) refers to the systematic application of reinforcement principles to increase desired behaviors and decrease problematic ones by linking specific behaviors to clear, consistent consequences. In practice, this may include reinforcing attendance and skill use, or linking privileges such as phone access or meal passes to treatment engagement. Across levels of care, CM principles are often already embedded, through structured weight contingencies, level systems, or behavioral expectations, but when applied inconsistently or without collaboration, they can create team polarization, patient opposition, and ruptures in trust. 

Implementing CM effectively in ED populations can be challenging. Clinicians may feel uncertain about how to set or adjust contingencies, struggle to maintain consistency, or “give in” to intense emotional reactions when holding limits. Patients may perceive contingencies as punitive, and multidisciplinary teams can find it difficult to maintain unified responses across settings. This workshop reframes CM not as behavioral control, but as a collaborative process, a means of fostering coherence, transparency, and shared values across the therapeutic environment.

C3. Building Bridges: How Mentorship Shapes Sustainable Eating Disorder Services In The Maritimes

Presenters: Jessica Wournell, Brittany McQuillan, Stephanie Annema

Description: This workshop shares how Prince Edward Island successfully launched a provincial eating disorder service through partnership and collaboration with Nova Scotia’s Provincial Service and capacity-building approach. We will walk through the journey—from early leadership engagement to implementation—highlighting practical strategies that fostered trust, shared learning, and system-level change. Real-world data, including the number of clinicians trained annually and referrals since 2022, will demonstrate the measurable impact of this partnership. Participants will explore key initiatives developed through collaboration and discuss ongoing efforts to sustain and expand services. Interactive breakout sessions will focus on identifying gaps in current systems, strategies for building partnerships, and actionable steps to implement or enhance services. By the end of the session, attendees will leave with practical tools for initiating service change, engaging stakeholders, and scaling evidence-based care delivery across regions or provinces.

C4. From Program Evaluation To Measurement-Based Care: Insights And Opportunities

Presenters: Elizabeth Quon & Nicole Obeid

Description: Introduce measurement-based care and describe how this differs from traditional program evaluation. Provide overview of the history of program evaluation at CHEO. Discuss how the evaluation needs have shifted with significant expansion of the program. Review the activities our team has undertaken to transform our approach to data collection, including program logic models, current/future-state mapping, input from clinical team and patient representatives, and change management strategy.  

Large- and small-group interactive exercises and discussions to 1) reflect on the constructs that are important to measure and evaluate when providing care to people with eating disorders; 2) generate progress indicators to evaluate patient outcomes on a continuous basis in their programs; 3) discuss how data may be used to support clinical care, quality improvement, and research.  

Conclude by reviewing the constructs and progress indicators to be used at CHEO and sharing lessons learned from our journey to inform application at other sites.

C5. What We Want You To Know: Insights From Those With Lived Experience

Presenters: Catherine Armour & Shaleen Jones

Description: Less than 1 in 4 people living with an eating disorder seek out or receive treatment, and our current treatments for eating disorder only result in recovery for 30-50% of individuals. Equity-deserving groups, including 2SLGBTQIA+ communities and racialized Canadians experience unique and increased risk and barriers to care. 

Insights from those navigating eating disorder recovery are an invaluable resource for removing barriers to care, improving treatment outcomes, and sustaining recovery.  

Our panel will share their learnings and perspectives gained as part of their own recovery journey, with a special emphasis on their experience with provincially funded treatment programs. Panelists will speak to what was helpful, what was not, and what changes might have been helpful for them. 

Participants will take part in guided discussions on ensuring mutual respect, empathy, safety, and power dismantlement when working to centre lived experience along with addressing common challenges and pitfalls around meaningful engagement.

F5. Suicide Postvention In Eating Disorder Treatment: Clinical Perspectives

Presenters: Sarah Smith & Gina Dimitropoulos

Description: Suicide is the second leading cause of death among individuals with eating disorders.  Despite this, many clinicians report having no formal training in suicide postvention.  This workshop will focus on current evidence and best practices in suicide postvention with a focus on their relevance to individual clinicians and teams providing eating disorder care in different settings.  Specifically, we will summarize common effects of patient suicide on clinicians, explain the concept of postvention, discuss recommended best practices and answer questions based on our experiences as clinicians, and/or clinical team leaders, who have lost patients to suicide at different stages of our careers.