Juniver (http://www.joinjuniver.com/) is an early-stage health company on a mission to revolutionise eating disorder recovery by delivering on-demand help for compulsive moments, when people are most susceptible.
Every year, eating disorders affect 2.4M people in the UK, costing £12b. Current guidelines recommend therapy, but recovery is only marginally successful. Over 90% of sufferers, the majority of whom are women, do not access help, stating cost, administrative complexity, and stigma as barriers. Yet, symptoms gravely affect their lives.
We directly address these barriers by offering an affordable solution rooted in neuroscience that's always with you, that flexes to your symptoms, and features a compassionate community for extra support when you need it.
With this award, we will run a research trial recruiting a diverse range of eating disorder sufferers to establish the efficacy of our solution. We will measure engagement and clinical outcomes, compared to receiving no treatment as well as compared to and paired with current gold standard treatment, cognitive behavioural therapy.
Today, less than 1% of mental health research funding in the UK goes to eating disorders. While women represent the majority of sufferers, eating disorders affect people of any weight, age, gender, socioeconomic background and ethnicity. Yet less than a third of published papers reflect that diversity, fuelling the stereotype of the typical sufferer being an underweight, White young woman. Our mission is to advance the understanding of eating disorders through data - from identifying novel measures of detection, to disease causation, and personalised treatment needs.
We're excited to work towards building a different world, where we are in control of our own health through equitable access to treatment, accessible research, and empathetic care.