Our mission is to be guided by the Amy Helpenstell Foundation's message of help, hope and healing by promoting awareness, understanding, diagnosis and treatment for eating disorders in our community.
Amy's Gift is a resource provider, not a treatment center. Our focus is to educate the public and provide information on eating disorder resources local to the Quad Cities area.
About Eating Disorders
Eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorders include extreme emotions, attitudes and behaviors surrounding weight and food issues. There are serious emotional and physical problems that can have life threatening consequences for females and males with an eating disorder.
Eating disorder specialists believe that chances for recovery increase the earlier symptoms are detected. Therefore, it is important to be aware of some of the warning signs of eating disorders.
If you are looking for a professional speaker to provide information on eating disorders or would like to receive an information packet with details on local resources from Amy's Gift, please contact:
Stephanie Burrough
Amy's Gift Project Coordinator
Phone: (309) 779-3077
Email: info@amysgift.com
eating disorder RESOURCES
Find links below for more local and national resources for educators, providers and the public.
for Educators
Coming soon!
for providers
Click the image above
for the public
Coming soon!
About Amy's Gift
In April 2007, the Amy Helpenstell Foundation sponsored a community survey on eating disorders in conjunction with the Robert Young Center for Community Mental Health. This one-of-a-kind survey included interviews with 800 residents throughout the Quad-City area and covered residents' knowledge of eating disorders, perceptions of eating disorders and suggestions for recommended treatment of eating disorders. View those results.
The survey showed our community was surprisingly accurate in their knowledge of eating disorders as they are clinically defined. However, whereas the perception of eating disorders was as a predominantly mental rather than physical disorder, over half of the respondents identified their preferred treatment site as a family doctor's office or hospital.
One of the central initiatives of Amy's Gift (formerly known as the QC Eating Disorders Consortium) then became to gauge and raise awareness at the primary reference source for treatment: the family practitioner.
Since then we have conducted several focus groups with local physicians to gauge their comfort with diagnosis, treatment and referral for patients with eating disorders as well as school officials to discover where training and education were most needed. These focus groups culminated in an effort to provide annual, local continuing education events on eating disorders for practitioners, school officials and the general public as well as a detailed website with local resources and links to national organizations for professionals and patients alike.