Research in focus: Sally Stewart

Name:

Sally Stewart

My pronouns:

she/her

Title:

Associate Professor of Teaching

Faculty/Department/Unit:

School of Health and Exercise Sciences, Faculty of Health and Social Development

Location:

Okanagan

Year I started working at UBC:

2006

Provide an overview of your research in 75 words or less:

There is a high incidence of eating disorders (EDs) in university students, and a lack of content of this issue in the health profession programs curriculum. EDs have significant health risks, high mortality, and greatly impacts student mental and physical wellbeing and learning. My team has developed, implemented, and evaluated online learning modules on weight stigma/bias and the unique clinical presentations of eating disorders to provide greater awareness to promote access to timely care.

What first motivated you (or motivates you) to conduct your research?

Being a teacher at heart, my goal is to foster student success. Coming from an academic background in health, nutrition and exercise physiology, the awareness of poor student health negatively impacting learning, was very clear. Literature strongly demonstrates the link between wellbeing and learning, in addition, and unfortunately, the nature of university environments perpetuates disordered eating. I wanted to do something to mitigate this horrible health issue that comes with huge treatment barriers.

What do you hope will change as a result of this research?

I hope our research project, and its deliverables, can be widely disseminated in a variety of higher education health profession programs, as well as to other university units that influence students' wellbeing and their university experience. The evaluation of these modules will foster their further development for them to be received as an effective and efficient means of communicating knowledge to decrease the barriers to receive timely and appropriate care for those experiencing EDs.

Are there any research collaborators you'd like to acknowledge and why?

I have an incredible interdisciplinary team, all of whom bring expertise and enthusiasm for our project: Drs. Libben, Piercy (Psychology), D. Jasper (Nursing), Dr.Purcell (SMP/Biology), and the committed students: L. Thomas, J. Gerloff (Psychology), C. Foraseno (Biochemistry), S. Pham (Nutrition), H. Dunsmore, D. Snell (Health and Exercise Sciences). Including students in our project is critical; it's a student issue and the research opportunity is a valuable learning experience for them, and they teach us so much too.

Describe any interesting research milestones you are approaching

Our project is called "EMPHASize." The letters refer to first letters of words related to the research focus. We want to "emphasize" the seriousness of EDs, the need for greater awareness and education, and de-emphasize body size and weight. We have 3 sets of data on 3 modules, and piloting the fourth module. Our project was presented at the Obesity Canada conference (April) and we are presenting at EDAC this week. We were recently awarded at TLEF grant to continue our work.