European Chapter AED, ECAED; meaning, value, history
Umberto Nizzoli *
I was talking with dr. Lorenzo Donini. For a few years we had managed to have Sisdca accepted as a
society in partnership with AED. I was part of the Pcac of AED representing Sisdca. Donini was the Sisdca president and I was the president-elect. We felt the need to establish a European section within AED. So we wrote an abstract to present at the ICED conference that was being held in 2017 in Prague (1). We presented that idea/proposal at the Conference and the CEO of AED, Elissa Meyer, a person with great managerial skills and excellent vision, immediately organized a spontaneous assembly within Iced. Many dozens of colleagues participated. Our idea of creating a European Chapter was enthusiastically accepted. The need to know each other, to exchange experiences, to collaborate came with force. There it was decided to create the European AED Chapter.
It was thus that I organized, again with Lorenzo Donini, the first European AED Conference. In Rome on 10th March 2018. The theme was: Toward a European Health Care System: Best practices to prevent and treat Eating Disorders. At the end of it, during the appropriate assembly, the first election of the Chapter board was made. Dr. Ashish Kumar was elected president.
Since then, the Chapter has worked hard. With the presidency of Dr. Kumar was held the European Conference within ICED 2019 in New York. Then in London at the Royal College of Psychiatrists in November of the same year, the third European ECAED Conference took place.
It was ECAED under the guidance of Dr. Kumar that started the Global Survey project that still engages AED today.
Dr. Kumar later became the chair of the RCoPs Faculty on ED.
Every year ECAED has organized a European Conference and participated in ICED where in recent years it has held the pre-conference together with two other Chapters, MEEDA, from the Middle East, and HLA, the Hispanic-Latino sister chapter.
The last one in March 2024 had as its theme: Understanding the Global Landscape of Eating Disorders.
In total, 11 Conferences have been held by ECAED, 12 if we consider the assembly at ICED in 2017.
At the end of the first three-year period, in December 2021, a new board was elected with Umberto Nizzoli as president and Yael Latzer as vice-president.
The current three-year period has also been characterized by the development of a series of themes through specific working groups: the alliance with caregivers, the prevention of burnout of EDs professionals, Recommendations for clinical approach of LGBTQI+ people.
ECAED produces also a Newsletter, this is the eighth issue.
Many of ECAED's activities are on its website and social media. A special thank’s to Dawn Gannon for her technical support. On the website there is a collection of on-demand recordings from the webinars it has organized (https://www.european-aed.org/) .
Our work has had as its guiding star the dissemination of the AED Mission by developing a European vision.
* ECAED president
1,
2017 ICED – 8-10 June 2017
Title: Workshop to address of the creation of an European Chapter of the AED (EC-AED).
Facilitators: Lorenzo Donini, Umberto Nizzoli
The aim of the EC-AED is to contribute to the AED’s mission of promoting the knowledge, prevention, treatment, and research in the field of eating disorders (ED) enforcing AED activities.
The EC-AED will represent a forum inside the AED’s for new contacts and exchange of experiences among ED professionals associations in the European arena looking for problems and difficulties in treatment and prevention that characterize the European region.
The EC-AED will invite all the Scientific Societies and organizations of eating disorder professionals dealing with eating disorders around Europe[i]. In particular it will cooperate with the Nordic Eating Disorder Society (NEDS) which was formed in 1997 and already aggregates all the members of the Nordic National Societies for Eating Disorders in Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway
The partnership within the Chapter will help build mutually beneficial collaborations with and between the different components of the EC-AED.
Finally the EC-AED will foster the ability to work together clinically and academically to advance education, awareness, research, and collaboration in the field of eating disorders.
The Board of the EC-AED will consist of one ordinary member and one substitute, elected by the national board from each of the member countries. A general vote at the EC-AED General Assembly elects the chairperson for two years.
Biannually EC-AED will organize a conference in close cooperation with AED and with the national societies participating to the Chapter.
[i] Austria The Austrian Society on Eating Disorders (ASED)/Österreichische Gesellschaft für Essstörungen (ÖGES)
Czech Republic: Czech Eating Disorder Association (CZEDA)
Denmark: Danish Eating Disorder Society (DSS)
Finland: Finnish Eating Disorder Society (FEDS)
Flanders: The Flemish Academy of Eating Disorders/Vlaamse Academie Eetstoornissen (VAE)
France: Association Française pour le Développement des Approches Spécialisées dans les Troubles du Comportement Alimentaire (AFDAS-TCA)
Germany: The German Eating Disorder Society/Deutsche Gesellschaft für Essstörungen (DGESS)
Iceland: The Icelandic Eating Disorder Association (IEDA)/Félag fagfólks um átraskanir (FFÁ)
Italy: Italian Society of Eating Behavior Psychopathology (SIPA)
Italy: Italian Society for the Study of Eating Disorders / Società Italiana per lo Studio dei Disturbi del Comportamento Alimentare (SISDCA)
Netherlands: Dutch Academy for Eating Disorders/Nederlandse Academie voor Eetstoornissen (NAE)
Poland: Polish National Center for Eating Disorders (PNCED)/Ogólnopolskie Centrum Zaburzeń Odżywiania
Spain: Asociación Española para el Estudio de los Trastornos de Conducta Alimentaria (A.E.E.T.C.A.)
Sweden: The Swedish Eating Disorder Society (SEDS)
Switzerland: Expert Network Eating Disorders Switzerland/Experten- Netzwerk Essstörungen Schweiz (ENES), Réseau Expert Suisse Troubles Alimentaires (RESTA)