Research Team

Eric Stice, Ph.D.

A major focus of Dr. Stice's research program is to design and evaluate prevention programs for eating disorders, obesity, and depression and to broadly implement them to reduce the population prevalence of these public health problems. His team created a brief body acceptance intervention that uses dissonance-induction to reduce risk for onset of eating disorders. This is the only prevention program to significantly reduce future onset of eating disorders in multiple trials. A recent trial found that it produced a 77% reduction in future onset of eating disorders over a 2-year follow-up.

This prevention program was confirmed to reduce fMRI-assessed brain reward region response to thin models. The intervention has been implemented to over 8 million adolescent girls and young women in 140 countries, including at over 250 US universities. His team also developed a highly effective cognitive behavioral depression prevention program being implemented throughout the US and UK.

In addition, his team uses brain imaging to identify neural vulnerability factors that increase risk for unhealthy weight gain and is evaluating interventions that target the identified neural vulnerability factors. He has published over 330 scientific articles and books, which have been cited over 67,000 times.

• Career Award, National Institutes of Health
• Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contributions to Psychopathology, American Psychological Association
• Nan Tobler Award, Society for Prevention Research
• Lori Irving Award for Excellence in Eating Disorder Prevention and Awareness, National Eating Disorders Association

Heather Shaw, Ph.D.

Dr. Heather Shaw is a Researcher with Stanford University and was previously a Senior Research Associate at Oregon Research Institute, where she has been part of the research team that developed, evaluated, and disseminated the highly efficacious and effective dissonance-based The Body Project eating disorder prevention program, which has produced significant intervention effects in numerous trials by independent groups.

She has co-authored findings from these studies in respected peer-reviewed journals, as well as co-authored meta-analytic reviews in the areas of depression, eating disorders, and obesity. Currently, she is working on studies investigating how different levels of implementation support of The Body Project affect long-term eating disorder outcomes and evaluation of a treatment version of The Body Project.

Paul Rohde, Ph.D.

Paul Rohde, Ph.D., is a Senior Research Scientist at Oregon Research Institute (ORI) and a licensed psychologist. Working with Dr. Peter Lewinsohn, he received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Oregon in 1988, at which time he began work at ORI. His research focuses on the epidemiology, treatment, and prevention of adolescent psychopathology, primarily focused on depression and eating disorders, with a special interest in the impact of comorbid conditions.

Dr. Rohde has directed or co-directed 25 federally-funded research projects, including three R01 randomized controlled trials with Dr. Eric Stice evaluating variants of The Body Project and two R01 randomized controlled trials with Dr. Stice evaluating various interventions designed to prevent obesity. He has published over 165 research-based articles, and is a co-author of the updated edition of The Body Project manual:

He has served on several journal review boards and was a standing member of the National Institute of Mental Health Interventions Committee for Disorders Involving Children.

Meghan L. Butryn, Ph.D.

Dr. Meghan L. Butryn is a collaborator on The Body Project research team and a co-author of effectiveness research on the program, including the multi-site effectiveness trial reported in Stice, Butryn, Rohde, Shaw, & Marti (2013). Her research focuses on the prevention and treatment of disordered eating and weight-related behaviors and on translating evidence-based interventions into real-world settings.