BIRES: Building body image resilience in populations undergoing rapid economic development
BIRes is a five-year (2024-2029) ERC Advanced Grant – UKRI Horizon funded project (€2.5M) encompassing multiple low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in Latin America and Africa. It combines large scale, controlled educational intervention studies with adolescents and their parents, and focused qualitative and indigenous participatory research methods with whole communities, to establish cross- and intra-cultural constants and diversity in the mechanisms for reducing body dissatisfaction (BD) and its downstream outcomes. The Caribbean Coasts of Colombia serves as foundational case study to then extend into wider regions of Latin America (Mexico, Honduras and Peru) and Africa (Kenya, Zimbabwe & the Republic of South Africa).
Funder: ERC Advanced Grant / UKRI Horizon Guarantee funding. 2024-2029 (€2.5M)
Principal Investigator: Prof Lynda Boothroyd
Collaborators: Prof Elizabeth Evans, Dr Tracey Thornborrow, Dr Stephen Asatsa, Dr Ana Chamorro Coneo, Lic. Mauricio Fernandes, Dr William Flores, Dr Olga Grijalva Martinez, Dr Alejandra Nuñez de la Mora, Dr Macdonald Matika, Dr Moises Mebarak, Dr Fabienne Andres
Aims and why BIRes now
With rapid globalisation and increasing influence of mass media on appearance ideals, low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are experiencing dramatic increases in body dissatisfaction (BD), eating disorders and use of invasive medications and surgeries that claim to increase beauty. LMICs and their more economically marginal communities have also been largely excluded from body image intervention research so far as this has focused on high-income, mostly Western populations. This exclusion is not limited to their presence as participants or researchers, but also their situated local epistemological frameworks.
BIRes is building resilience in populations in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in Latin America and Africa who, as part of their rapid social, economic and technological change, are experiencing an increasing exposure to globalised media with their negative effect of appearance-idealised media imagery on body image. BIRes is doing so by establishing an evidence-base and theoretical framework for body image education in LMICs, through the delivery and systematic evaluation of a culturally-tailored intervention in multiple LMIC populations undergoing rapid economic and social change. This project aims to develop our understanding of body dissatisfaction and eating disorder risk across the diverse cultural settings in which these occur by reversing the typical focus on urban, middle-class samples. It also ensures strong cultural grounding by integrating controlled cross-cultural studies with locally-led participatory-action research.
A core part of the project is the development of the educational intervention for teenagers Soy Como Soy (I Am Who I Am). This intervention was originally developed in rural Nicaragua in 2022 and we are now running a large-scale randomised control trial in an economically and ethnically diverse region in the Caribbean Coast Colombia. Additional studies will expand into broader Latin America and Africa to finally encompass over 3000 participants in 6 countries across 4 continents.
To find out more about the intervention and get access to materials please visit:
