Zafra Cooper, DPhil, DClinPsych, adjunct professor of psychiatry, has been awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Eating Disorders.
The award was presented at the Academy’s international conference in Washington, D.C. held June 1-3.
Lifetime Achievement Awards are given to recognize an expert in the field for her/his lifetime contributions to the Academy or to the field in general.
According to a social media post by Ruth Weissman, PhD, editor of the International Journal of Eating Disorders and past president of the Academy of Eating Disorders, Cooper has had a “storied career … impacting the field with her contributions to the assessment and treatment of eating disorders.”
Cooper is emeritus professor of clinical psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Oxford University, where she jointly directed the internationally recognized Centre for Research on Eating Disorders. Funded by the Wellcome Trust, the Centre pursued a program of research on various aspects of eating disorders, including their assessment, diagnosis and classification, distribution, and treatment.
With colleagues, she produced a widely used interview for the assessment of eating disorders and developed a new form of transdiagnostic enhanced CBT (CBT- E) suitable for the full range of eating disorders.
Cooper jointly established the Centre for Research on Dissemination at Oxford and directed the research on clinician training and the development of measures of therapist competence. Her ongoing interests include further treatment development to improve interventions for eating disorders and comorbid conditions and bridging the treatment gap.
While at Yale, she has received funding, with colleagues, from the U.S. Department of Defense to study eating disorders, comorbid conditions, and risk factors in U.S veterans and from the National Institute of Mental Health to develop a measure of provider competence for non-specialist health care workers delivering brief psychological interventions for depression.