The Researcher Community Showcase: Co-creating eating disorder research with gender diverse, autistic, and ADHD communities – Dr Kai Thomas

I’m Dr Kai Thomas, a Health and Care Research Wales Advanced Fellow based at the School of Psychology, Cardiff University. My research interests are focused on understanding the development and presentation of eating disorders (EDs) to identify potential targets for novel treatment and support. My research in this area began during my ESRC-funded MSc and PhD at Cardiff University where I investigated behavioural and neural correlates of cognitive control and their associations with disordered eating behaviours. Following the completion of my PhD in 2022, I stayed in Cardiff where I was fortunate to be appointed as a Lecturer in the School of Psychology. I remained in this post until September 2024.

I started my Health and Care Research Wales Advanced Fellowship in October 2024. I will use a multi-perspective mixed-methods approach to comprehensively and holistically understand how EDs present and are experienced by gender diverse and neurodivergent people. This will develop our understanding of the phenomenology of EDs in these underserved groups, identifying key factors to target in prevention and intervention efforts, clinician-related barriers, and challenges associated with accessing ED support. Based on this new knowledge, we will co-produce resources with people who have lived experience of EDs and ED clinicians to provide guidance for best practice, overcome clinician-related barriers, and share lived experiences.

I consulted with neurodivergent and gender diverse people who had lived experience of an ED and clinicians when designing this research, disseminating the key themes in an infographic. This helped ensure their insights and perspectives were integrated from the very start of the research. We will continue to develop these relationships by involving key beneficiaries in our advisory boards, who will be involved in each stage of the research process. We have just completed our first set of meetings with our lived experience advisory board members who shared their insightful perspectives and feedback to help shape our first study, a large-scale survey. Following a meeting with our professional advisory board which includes academics, clinicians, and representatives from our research partner, Beat, we will amend our survey to address the feedback raised. This ensures our research is relevant, meaningful, and accessible to the communities it aims to serve. We very much look forward to continuing to build and establish these relationships with our advisory board members throughout the project.