06 October 2026
A new paper from the Australian Eating Disorders Research & Translation Centre (AEDRTC), published in Nature Mental Health, explores what this looks like when co-production is embedded across the full research cycle.
Read paper here: A full-cycle approach for co-producing trial research for treatment of eating disorders
Researchers, clinicians and people with lived and living experience worked together throughout the research process, from deciding what to study through to designing clinical trials. It was a collaborative approach built around shared knowledge, shared decision-making and co-ownership of methodological decisions.
One example included when the team was designing an innovative clinical trial for binge-spectrum disorders. Researchers and biostatisticians developed two possible approaches, which were explained to the broader group using visual and educational resources to support shared understanding.
While researchers and clinicians were initially undecided, people with lived and living experience supported a design that could better account for individual differences and provide opportunities to tailor treatment for people who did not respond to the initial intervention.
Their input directly influenced the final trial design, demonstrating how co-production can shape even highly technical and consequential decisions about how clinical research is conducted.
Sharing power across different forms of expertise isn’t always straightforward. The team navigated tensions between research evidence and experience-based knowledge, technical expertise and shared understanding, and the time needed to build relationships and trust.
Rather than seeing these challenges as barriers, the team used them as opportunities to learn, reflect and strengthen the co-production process.
The experience has shaped more than the research itself. It has contributed to a shift in mindset towards valuing different forms of knowledge, restoring trust and addressing power imbalances in eating disorder research. The team has also turned these learnings into a digital tool to help mental health researchers reflect on their own co-production needs and readiness.
The co-produced studies are now underway, including research exploring personalised psychotherapies and deep brain stimulation alongside comprehensive phenotypic and genotypic characterisation.
The team hopes this approach will contribute to meaningful outcomes for people with eating disorders, while building the evidence for what co-production can achieve in research.
At its heart, the work is about changing not just what research is done, but how it is done, with the aim to find more treatments for more people.
