%0 Clinical Trial Protocol
%T Implementation and outcomes of home-based treatments for adolescents with anorexia nervosa: Study protocol for a pilot effectiveness-implementation trial.
%A Goldschmidt AB
%A Tortolani CC
%A Egbert AH
%A Brick LA
%A Elwy AR
%A Donaldson D
%A Le Grange D
%J Int J Eat Disord
%V 55
%N 11
%D 11 2022
%M 36324297
%F 5.791
%R 10.1002/eat.23796
%X Although family-based treatment (FBT) is considered a first-line treatment for adolescent anorexia nervosa (AN), it is underutilized in community settings and is unavailable to many families for a multitude of practical reasons (e.g., costs of treatment, transportation constraints). Adapting FBT interventions for delivery in home-based and community-based settings may reduce pragmatic barriers to treatment uptake and engagement.
This pilot effectiveness-implementation trial will assess outcomes, implementation, and mechanisms of FBT adapted for the home setting (FBT-HB), delivered in the context of community-based behavioral health agencies. Adolescents with AN-spectrum disorders (n = 50) and their caregivers will be randomly assigned to either FBT-HB or home-based treatment as usual (TAU; integrated family therapy approach). Caregivers and adolescents will provide data on weight, eating, and putative treatment mechanisms, including caregiver self-efficacy and adolescent eating-related and weight-related distress. Implementation constructs of feasibility, acceptability, and appropriateness will be measured among providers and participating families.
We expect that FBT-HB will be feasible, acceptable, and appropriate, and will outperform TAU in terms of improvements in adolescent weight and eating-related psychopathology. We further expect that caregiver self-efficacy and adolescent eating-related and weight-related distress, but not general distress, will show greater improvements in FBT-HB relative to TAU and will be associated with better adolescent weight and eating outcomes in FBT-HB.
The proposed study has clear potential to advance scientific and clinical understanding of the real-world effectiveness of FBT for AN, including whether adapting it for the home setting improves its accessibility and effects on treatment outcome.