Eating Disorder Research Network Draws 960 Members Worldwide

The news coverage frames GLP-1 medicines and the overlap between obesity and eating disorders as the main issue. But the Journal of Eating Disorders paper supplied here focuses on something different: the first roughly 15 months of an international research network called the Consortium for Research in Eating Disorders, or CoRe-ED.

CoRe-ED launched in September 2024 as an international charity. Its stated goal is to support innovation in eating-disorder research by bringing together people with different kinds of expertise and experience. The researchers examined who joined the network, how they engaged with its activities, and what they hoped to gain from taking part.

The study included information from people who registered with CoRe-ED between September 25, 2024, and December 31, 2025. Registrants completed an online form and agreed that deidentified, combined data could be used for research. The team also analyzed feedback from 10 CoRe-ED events, involvement in collaborative initiatives, and an overall survey about registrants’ experiences.

In total, 960 people from 37 countries across five continents registered. The group included researchers, health professionals, people with lived experience of eating disorders, advocates, representatives of not-for-profit organizations, and industry professionals. The paper does not give a breakdown of how many registrants were in each group.

People who joined said they expected opportunities to build professional and community connections, contribute to research, collaborate with others, learn new skills and take part in advocacy. They also hoped the network would help encourage innovation, bring lived experience into research, support international work and offer mentorship.

One CoRe-ED project, called “Next Big Research Idea,” brought together 18 multidisciplinary teams across 20 countries. These teams worked on developing collaborative research proposals. The study describes this as an effort to encourage new research ideas across disciplines and national borders; it does not report whether the proposals were funded or what results they may eventually produce.

Feedback from events and the wider network was described as highly positive. Participants particularly valued diverse speakers, global perspectives, an inclusive setting, and chances to learn and connect. These findings suggest the network was able to engage a broad international group and offer activities that matched what many registrants were looking for.

Still, this was an early evaluation of a voluntary network, based in part on registrants’ own feedback. Positive satisfaction reports do not show that CoRe-ED has improved treatment, changed policy, increased research funding or led to better health outcomes. The authors say future work should look at longer-term effects, including research outputs, mentorship, co-design and policy translation.

Importantly, this study was not a clinical trial, review or observational study of GLP-1 medicines. It did not measure binge eating, appetite changes, weight, medication side effects, eating-disorder symptoms or treatment outcomes. It also did not identify which people might benefit from GLP-1 medicines or which people might face greater risks.

That distinction matters because the coverage’s broader questions about GLP-1 medicines require direct clinical research. Such research would need to clearly describe who took part, what medicine was used, what it was compared with, how long participants were followed, and what benefits and harms occurred. The published CoRe-ED paper supports the value of bringing varied perspectives together to address complex questions, but it does not answer the medication questions itself.