Medical Emergencies in Eating Disorders (MEED) guidance published
This month the College published its MEED guidance, amid a flurry of positive publicity and huge online interest.
In the headlines
The College’s media story to promote the guidance – to help frontline staff ensure that people with eating disorders needing urgent care can be identified and treated earlier - featured in hundreds of media outlets last week, including all major broadcasters across the country.
The media story highlighted the stark rise of 84% of hospital admissions for eating disorders in the last five years, to demonstrate the need for the new guidance, and gained a total audience reach 181.8 million helping the guidance receive over 10,000 views on the College website.
The chair of the Eating Disorders Faculty, Dr Agnes Ayton, and patient representative James Downs alongside Dr Dasha Nicholls, who chaired the development of the MEED guidelines, were interviewed by journalists across broadcast, print and online.
Highlights included BBC’ Radio 4 Today Programme, BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC Breakfast and ITV Evening News, and Sky News radio. The new guidance also featured in articles on BBC News Online, The Guardian, Guardian Opinion, MailOnline and The Independent.
Dr Nicholls’ call – “If we are to stop the eating disorders epidemic in its tracks, it’s vital that this guidance reaches healthcare professionals urgently and that government backs them with the necessary resources to implement them” – was included in hundreds of articles.
The Department of Health and Social Care in England responded to the story in the media and said it was investing £53m in children and young people's eating disorder services - to increase capacity in 70 community support teams across the country.
It said a further £79m was being invested in children's mental health services so that at least 2,000 more children and young people can access eating disorder services.
Online response
There has been unprecedented interest in the new guidelines on the College website. The landing page for the new report has now been seen over 10,000 times. This is a record for any College Report page (receiving more than twice the views of the next most viewed report) and the associated PDFs have been downloaded over 7,000 times.
Back to our May 2022 eNewsletter.