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Successful mobile phone intervention for eating disorders on college campuses will expand
LAWRENCE — Eating disorders are the most common mental health concern on college campuses, yet there is a serious shortage of treatment providers on campuses. A new program leveraging the phone to increase treatment access for college students experiencing eating disorders is expanding after a pilot program’s positive results at the University of Kansas where most participants saw recovery. Lead researcher Kelsie Forbush will partner closely with Watkins Health Services by training their providers to serve as coaches, which will help expand the reach of the intervention to colleges that do not have trained mental health eating-disorder providers.
Second School of Pharmacy dean candidate to present Feb. 24
LAWRENCE — David Dietz, professor and associate dean of research strategy at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo, will be the second candidate for the dean of the School of Pharmacy position to visit the University of Kansas Lawrence campus and share his vision for the school. Dietz’s public presentation will take place 4-5 p.m. Feb. 24 in Room 1020 of the School of Pharmacy building and via livestream.
‘John Proctor Is the Villain’ questions authority, convention in new KU Theatre production
LAWRENCE — Ahead of its Broadway premiere, the darkly comic “John Proctor Is the Villain” will open University Theatre’s spring season, playing March 7-13 at the University of Kansas. The play is a coming-of-age tale of how a contemporary small-town high school’s study of ”The Crucible” sparks a battle over power, betrayal and identity. Student cast and crew members include Kansans from Derby, Ellsworth, Fort Scott, Lawrence, Maize, Paola, Salina and Topeka as well as Missourians from Kansas City and Liberty.
Full stories below.
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Contact: Brendan Lynch, KU News Service, 785-864-8855, [email protected]
Successful mobile phone intervention for eating disorders on college campuses will expand
LAWRENCE — Eating disorders are the most common mental health concern on college campuses, yet there is a serious shortage of treatment providers on campuses. A new program leveraging the phone to increase treatment access for college students experiencing eating disorders is expanding after a pilot program’s positive results at the University of Kansas where most participants saw recovery.
The timing couldn’t be better. In the few years since the COVID-19 pandemic, eating disorder prevalence has increased by 62% in university women and 140% in university men, according to the KU researchers, citing a Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services study. But with a shortage of practical and affordable treatments for many of these students, the team behind BEST-U hopes to fill gaps in eating disorder treatment accessibility for universities across the country.
The BEST-U program, an 11-week treatment underpinned by guided self-help cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), has shown “most participants were fully recovered from their eating disorder” at KU, according to researcher Kelsie Forbush, professor of clinical child psychology at KU and co-principal investigator of a new $715,516 grant from the National Institutes of Health to expand the program to train non-mental health care professionals within student health settings to deliver the treatment.
Her co-principal investigator is Kara Christensen-Pacella, an assistant professor from the University of Nevada Las Vegas, who was previously a researcher and therapist on the pilot trial. The expanded study will take place at both KU and UNLV.
“We were inspired to create BEST-U because we saw a high demand for eating disorder treatment but very few resources in our community,” said Forbush, who also serves as a senior scientist with KU’s Life Span Institute and director of its newly founded Center for the Advancement of Research on Eating Behaviors (CARE). “In many cases, KU students had to drive to Kansas City for treatment, but some didn’t have a car. It was also very cost-prohibitive because most area providers did not take insurance.”
Forbush and her colleagues wanted to address the problem after seeing the obvious effect on students. First, they looked at the scope of the issue and found “incredibly” high rates of eating disorders on KU’s campus, matching national data. Then, they explored models that could expand access to intervention while remaining effective.
Forbush’s main collaborator was Sara Gould of Children’s Mercy Hospital-Kansas City, where she directs the eating disorder center and is a full-time clinician. Other key collaborators include KU faculty member Alesha Doan, who will lead qualitative aims and analyses to determine how to best scale the program to other colleges across the United States, and Angeline Bottera, who is the associate director of CARE.
“Together, we created an 11-week intervention using a mobile health app,” Forbush said. “Students spend about 10 minutes per week on the app, which is highly interactive, and they also receive 25 to 30 minutes of telehealth coaching from a trained graduate student. By the end of the 11 weeks, most participants were recovered from their eating disorder.”
Besides pairing participants with a trained BEST-U coach, the BEST-U interface includes videos, interactive quizzes, short questions and surveys to track progress each week.
Forbush will partner closely with Watkins Health Services by training their providers to serve as coaches, which will help expand the reach of the intervention to colleges that do not have trained mental health eating-disorder providers. Forbush is also conducting an additional clinical trial of BEST-U to identify if some clients can recover without receiving coaching sessions and who may need additional support.
“We were very excited about the results of our pilot trials and received great feedback,” Forbush said. “One of my favorite stories is about a new coordinator I hired to help run the study. She and her mom were shopping, and the cashier overheard their conversation. When the cashier realized our coordinator was working on the BEST-U study, the cashier said, ‘I participated in that study, and it changed my life.’”
Forbush’s other projects have included addressing eating disorders in the military and developing digital health tools for teens suffering from anorexia nervosa.
The CARE Center, formerly a lab, was established in recent months as a fully fledged research center under the Life Span Institute. CARE conducts research to better identify people with eating disorders for early screening, intervention and treatment-progress monitoring. The center’s mission is “to improve the way eating disorders are assessed, diagnosed and treated through cutting-edge methods and research.” CARE then applies findings to clinical settings with university students.
“The peak age of onset for eating disorders is usually late adolescence to early adulthood,” Forbush said. “So, we’re reaching people right in that peak window — when an eating disorder often starts or when they may have already had it for a few years before coming to college. That can be a good time to seek treatment. Sometimes people notice their eating disorder symptoms getting worse as they transition to college.”
It’s this work with university students Forbush cited as the most rewarding part of her research and clinical studies. Forbush said expanding the BEST-U program that has succeeded so well at KU makes her “very excited” because it means changing more lives for the better.
“It feels so rewarding to have identified a need — there’s a gap, and students need this service — and then to be able to help start filling that gap has felt amazing,” she said. “When you have an eating disorder in college, you really do miss out on a lot of the developmental experiences of becoming an adult — things like making friends and fully engaging in your classes — and you don’t get those years back. If we can help a student overcome an eating disorder and get back on track with the developmental trajectory of early adulthood, that’s extremely important. And that’s very rewarding.”
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Contact: Savannah Rattanavong, Office of the Provost, 785-864-6402, [email protected]
Second School of Pharmacy dean candidate to present Feb. 24
LAWRENCE — David Dietz will be the second candidate for the dean of the School of Pharmacy position to visit the University of Kansas Lawrence campus and share his vision for the school.
His public presentation will take place 4-5 p.m. Feb. 24 in Room 1020 of the School of Pharmacy building. The event will also be livestreamed, and the passcode is 932064.
Dietz is a professor and chair of the Department of Pharmacology & Toxicology as well as the associate dean of research strategy at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo in Buffalo, New York.
The remaining candidates will be announced approximately two business days before their respective campus visits. Their presentations will also take place 4-5 p.m. in Room 1020 of the School of Pharmacy building on the following dates:
Candidate 3: 4-5 p.m. Feb. 27
Candidate 4: 4-5 p.m. March 6
Members of the KU community are encouraged to attend each presentation and provide feedback to the search committee. Presentation recordings and the online feedback form will remain available on the search page through March 11.
Additional search information, including Dietz’s CV, is also available on the search page.
As chair of the pharmacology and toxicology department, Dietz oversees two undergraduate majors, two master’s programs and two doctoral programs. He founded the school’s undergraduate program in neurosciences, and he has also helped develop and implement a medical school curriculum that utilizes an integrated approach to prepare students for developing challenges in the modern health care field.
Dietz’s research has focused on understanding how molecular and behavioral plasticity in the brain mediates the susceptibility of individuals to drug abuse and relapse. He is principal investigator on multiple NIH grants to study heroin- and cocaine-induced changes in the brain during addiction.
Dietz trains several postdoctoral fellows and graduate students in his lab, where they have received a number of awards and independent funding.
In addition, Dietz has been recognized as a UB Exceptional Scholar, both as a Young Investigator in 2015 and for Sustained Achievement in 2023. Dietz is also a member or the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, Society for Neuroscience and American Association for the Advancement of Science. He previously served as the president of his local chapter for the Society for Neuroscience.
Dietz earned his doctorate in neuroscience from Florida State University and his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Rutgers University. He additionally was a postdoctoral fellow in the Friedman Brain Institute at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
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Contact: Lisa Coble-Krings, Department of Theatre & Dance, 785-864-5685, [email protected], @KUTheatre
‘John Proctor Is the Villain’ questions authority, convention in new KU Theatre production
LAWRENCE — “John Proctor Is the Villain” brims with sharp wit and pop culture references; nonetheless, this new comedy opening at the University of Kansas offers plenty of fodder for serious self-exploration on deeply held conventions.
The show opens University Theatre’s spring season, playing March 7-13 in the William Inge Memorial Theatre at Murphy Hall. A pre-show talk with Bess Rowen, who researches portrayals of teenage female rage on stage and has explored shows like “Mean Girls,” will occur March 13 in 341 Murphy Hall. Talkbacks with the cast will take place March 8 and March 11 in the theatre.
This coming-of-age story will feel “very real” as the student cast members are only a couple years removed from the age of the characters and their recent lived experiences revolving high school friendships and love helped shape them in rendering the roles of teenagers, according to director Jane Barnette, professor in the Department of Theatre & Dance.
Set in 2018 on the heels of the #MeToo Movement, this new comedy has given the playwright, Kimberly Belflower, Broadway name recognition as the work makes its Broadway premiere March 20. Tickets to see KU’s production can be purchased via the show’s web page, in person noon-5 p.m. at the box office in Murphy Hall or by calling 785-864-3982.
“This is a play about a charismatic teacher and about adolescent students discovering their power amid the challenges they face as they learn about literature. We hope locals will take this opportunity to be among the first to see Kimberly Belflower’s poignant comedy before it hits Broadway,” Barnette said. “With savage humor and a sense of heightened emotion, the play confronts the metaphorical use of ‘witch hunts’ and turns the term on its head.”
In “John Proctor Is the Villain,” a contemporary small-town high school’s study of ”The Crucible” sparks a battle over power, betrayal and identity. “The Crucible,” a 1953 play by Arthur Miller, is the partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials.
Films like “Mean Girls,” “High School Musical,” “Heathers” and “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” all are defined as comedies but have a dark underbelly. “This play is also a dark comedy,” Barnette said.
Original music composed by Mack McLaughlin, junior in music composition from Lincoln, Nebraska, will help the action move along and is a unique feature of the show.
In addition to Barnette as director and McLaughlin as composer, the creative team members are Josh Gilpin, second-year MFA student in scenography, as scenic designer; Lacey Marr, junior in theatre design from Liberty, Missouri, as costume designer; Riley Sansbury, senior in theatre performance from Houston, as lighting designer; Kitty Corum, graduate student, playwright, actor and freelance fight choreographer from Kansas City, as assistant director; Tiffani Brooks Hagan, KU doctoral student and freelance director from Campobello, South Carolina, as dramaturg; and Nya Rippert, sophomore in pharmacy from Ellsworth, as stage manager.
KU’s production is double cast, allowing for more student participation, which rewards repeat viewing. Cast members who appear in every showing are Casey Schenk, junior in theatre performance and mathematics from Topeka, as Mr. Smith, and Katelyn Arnold, junior in theatre performance from Topeka, as Miss Gallagher. The rest of the cast will perform on rotation, as posted on the “John Proctor Is the Villain: web page. Audiences will see Olly Mitchell, senior in theatre and American Sign Language from Maize, and Luci Damon-Davis, junior in film & media studies from Gurnee, Illinois, as Shelby; River Ott, sophomore in secondary history and government education from Derby, and Adeline Rome, sophomore in psychology and English from Topeka, as Beth; Ashanti Bell Green, senior in film & media studies from Fort Scott, and Sasha René, freshman in journalism & mass communications from Atlanta, as Nell; Sylvia VanDenPlas, freshman in psychology and film and media production from Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Alex Reimer, sophomore in theatre from Paola, as Ivy; Taylor Getz, junior in theatre performance from Santa Clara, California, and Vidhi Bhakta, junior in molecular, cellular & developmental biology from Salina, as Raelynn; Tré White, junior in psychology from St. Louis, and James Kensinger, junior in theatre performance from Topeka, as Mason; and Connor Cooper, senior in history and theatre performance from Lawrence, and Cade Nelson, freshman in theatre from Topeka, as Lee.
Barnette writes about adaptation dramaturgy. In 2018, she published “Adapturgy: The Dramaturg’s Art and Theatrical Adaptation,” the first of its kind to address the theory and practice of adaptation dramaturgy. At KU, she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in dramaturgy, theatre history, script analysis and seminars, including one on the portrayal of witches on the stage and screen. She currently serves as a KU Center for Teaching Excellence Faculty Fellow. Recent University Theatre directing credits are Caryl Churchill’s “Love and Information” and Susan Gayle Todd’s “Sycorax.” More can be found on her faculty web page.
The University Theatre is a production wing of KU’s Department of Theatre & Dance, offering public productions during the academic year. The University Theatre productions are funded in part by Student Senate fees and supported by Truity Credit Union. For more information on the University Theatre or to purchase tickets, visit KU Theatre website.
The department is one of three departments in the School of the Arts. As part of the KU College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, the School of the Arts offers fresh possibilities for collaboration between the arts and the humanities, sciences, social sciences, international and interdisciplinary studies.
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