Professional Advisory Council

S. Bryn Austin, ScD

Bryn is Director of Fellowship Research Training in the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at Children’s Hospital in Boston. She is Associate Professor in Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Associate Professor in Society, Human Development, and Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. Her primary research is in the behavioral sciences and social epidemiology, addressing social and physical environmental influences on eating disorders, physical activity, and nutritional behaviors in school and community settings. She is director of the Transdisciplinary Training Initiative in Prevention of Eating Disorders based at the Harvard School of Public Health and Children’s Hospital Boston.

Kathy Kater, LICSW

Kathy Kater, LICSW is a St. Paul, MN psychotherapist and an internationally known and respected author, speaker, and consultant who has specialized in treatment and prevention of the full spectrum of body image, eating, fitness and weight concerns for over 30 years. Frustrated that progress in understanding these problems had not been matched by effective prevention, Kater authored Healthy Body Image: Teaching Kids to Eat and Love Their Bodies Too!, Second Edition (2005, National Eating Disorders Association; First Edition 1998). Healthy Body Image is recommended by the U.S.D.H. of Office of Women’s Health in their BodyWise information packet for educators. Kater is a widely recognized authority on promotion of healthy body image, eating, fitness, and weight and is regularly invited to speak nationally and internationally at professional conferences, schools, colleges, universities and to community organizations.

Michael Levine, PhD

Dr. Levine is Samuel B. Cummings Jr. Professor of Psychology and former chair of the Psychology Department at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. Dr. Levine’s special interest is eating problems and their links with preventive education, developmental psychology, and community psychology. Dr. Levine is the co-editor of the book The Developmental Psychopathology of Eating Disorders and of Preventing Eating Disorders: A Handbook of Interventions and Special Challenges.

Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, PhD, MPH, RD

Dr. Neumark-Sztainer is a Professor in the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, School of Public Health and an Adjunct Professor in the Dept of Pediatrics, both at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Neumark-Sztainer’s research focuses on adolescent nutrition and the prevention of weight-related disorders. Her research explores the potential for integrating eating disorder and obesity prevention through intervention, epidemiological, and qualitative studies. Dr. Neumark-Sztainer wrote “I’m, like, SO, fat!” Helping your teen make healthy choices about eating and exercise in a weight-obsessed world.

Rebecka Peebles, MD

Dr. Peebles is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Adolescent Medicine at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Prior to CHOP, she was an Instructor at Stanford University School of Medicine’s Division of Adolescent Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, and was primarily involved with the Eating Disorders Clinic and  Center for Healthy Weight at the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. Dr. Peebles’ research interests focus on the health outcomes of disordered eating in adolescents of diverse weight ranges, and how the Internet can be used as a vector to both help and harm young people as they try to approach a healthy weight.  Her most recent work has been funded by the American Heart Association.

Jane Shure, PhD, LCSW

Jane Shure, PhD, LCSW a psychotherapist with 30 years of expertise and a nationally known speaker, workshop leader, and writer, recognized for her work in strengthening resilience in an effort to transform shame and trauma. For over ten years, she has been on the faculty of the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in Stockbridge, MA, leading weekend workshops on QuietingYour Inner Critic & Calming Your Anxious Mind.

Jane is co-editor of Effective Clinical Practice in the Treatment of Eating Disorders: The Heart of the Matter (Routledge,2009), and co-author of “Shame, Compassion and the Journey to Health” in the same volume. In 2003, she co-founded and subsequently, co-authored a self-esteem/resiliency building curriculum: The Inside/Outside Self-Discovery Program for the Middle School Years: Strategies to Promote Emotional Health, Resilience, and Relationships (ToucanEd, 2009).

Named a “Top Doc for Women” by Philadelphia Magazine, Jane writes for the Huffington Post, is a founding board member of A Chance to Heal, co-creator of SelfMatters.org (dedicated to strengthening self-esteem), and creator of “The Doctor’s In” blog.

Eric Stice, PhD

Dr. Stice’s research focuses on identifying the risk factors that predict onset of eating disorders, obesity, and depression. He develops and evaluates prevention programs for these conditions. He is the author of the Body Project, a dissonance-based intervention that has been found to reduce the risk factors associated with eating disorders.