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Mapping Eating Disorder Treatment Centers Across the United States

Jadon Shi1 and Lingbo Liu2 (mentor)

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1. Derryfield School, Manchester, NH, U.S.

2. Center of Geographic Analysis, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, U.S.

Presented at the 2025 Young Scholar Symposium on Spatiotemporal Data Science on Feb 1, 2025

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Background: Eating disorders

  • In under two decades, the prevalence of eating disorders has doubled worldwide.
    • Almost one-tenth of the United States or around 30 million people will suffer from eating disorders in their lifetime, with the risk estimated to be around double in females.
  • Eating disorders can affect people of all ages, racial and ethnic backgrounds, body weights, and genders.

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Background: Treatment

  • Treatment typically involves psychotherapy, nutrition education, and sometimes medication.
  • Treatment centers tend to be located near dense population centers
  • Medications are only available for a few select disorders and only to treat certain symptoms since eating disorders are mental illnesses

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Research Objective:

Describing and visualizing the spatial distribution of eating disorder treatment centers, across the United States, with the purpose of assessing the access to such healthcare services

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Data: Treatment Centers

  • Data on around 430 treatment centers across the United States
    • Data sorted by state
    • Contains data on location, website URL, type of services offered, insurance, Medicaid

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Method: KNIME Workflows

  • Used KNIME Workflow to filter down the data according to certain criteria such as age or location
  • Also utilized the use of AI to help the process along

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Results: Storymap

  • Data was put into an ArcGIS StoryMaps presentation to map the change in trends in locations of eating disorder treatment centers across the United States.

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Results: Storymap (cont.)

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Discussion: Future Research

  • Lays important groundwork for the future
  • Provides accurate information representing the problem
  • Story Map is easy to understand and use

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Acknowledgement

Prof. S. Bryn Austin

Dr. Lingbo Liu

Dr. Ariel Beccia

Chuying Huo

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Thank You!

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/f46da261ceb64c3794ecd247da8652cd