JANUARY 9, 2026
Emily Presseller, PhD
Assistant Professor of Biomedical Data Science and Psychiatry
Center for Technology and Behavioral Health
Dartmouth College
About the Presentation: Only approximately 20% of individuals with eating disorders in the United States access treatment, substantiating the critical need for highly disseminable, potent eating disorder interventions that overcome systemic and individual barriers to accessing traditional care. Standalone digital interventions offer promise for improving outcomes at scale, but to date have only modest efficacy, likely due in part to insufficient personalization and optimization of these interventions.
This presentation will discuss an upcoming study using novel methods to improve the efficacy of a precision psychiatry digital intervention for eating disorders. Specifically, the study will use idiographic dynamical systems models to tailor the intervention to individual participants and their contexts. Further, the study will deliver micro-randomized just-in-time adaptive interventions promoting use of key cognitive-behavioral therapy skills at identified times of risk for eating disorder behaviors to facilitate evaluating the effects of these skills on eating disorder behaviors and their maintenance factors. Findings from the study will clarify the effectiveness of these methods for increasing potency of standalone digital interventions and lay the groundwork for future evaluation of a personalized, optimized digital intervention for transdiagnostic eating disorders.
About the Presenter: Emily Presseller is an assistant professor in the departments of Biomedical Data Science and Psychiatry at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College. Dr. Presseller received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from Drexel University and completed her clinical internship at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine/Kennedy Krieger Institute. Her research has been funded by organizations including the National Institute of Mental Health, American Psychological Association, and Psi Chi. Dr. Presseller’s lab at Dartmouth, the Scalable, Accessible Treatments for Eating Disorders and Related Psychopathology (SATED) Lab, applies ecological data (e.g., ecological momentary assessments, sensor data) to understand maintenance of eating disorder symptoms in patients’ daily lives and develop personalized, targeted digital interventions for eating and related psychopathology.