Kerry Washington Joins Eating Disorder Startup Equip As Investor And Advisor
Actress Kerry Washington joined Equip Health, a startup that supports people with eating disorders, as an investor and advisor, Fortune reports.
Equip Health has raised $110 million from other angel investors, including Katie Couric and soccer celeb Alex Morgan. Equip provides users with virtual appointments with experts, including therapists, doctors, dietitians, family, and peer mentors.
Washington opened up about her eating disorder in her memoir Thicker Than Water. She spoke about her struggles with binge eating and severe food restriction, often not consuming food for several days or obsessively exercising.
Kerry Washington investing in Equip Health
Kristina Saffran, Equip’s cofounder and CEO, read Washington’s book and told her co-founder (chief clinical officer Erin Parks) they needed to contact her. Saffran was looking for a celebrity to partner with to help highlight Equip’s cause. However, she did not want to reinforce the idea that eating disorders only affect thin, white women.
Parks told Fortune that doctors and therapists often receive little training specific to eating disorders. This is why it is usually believed that eating disorders mainly affect white women. Washington echoes Park’s thoughts, saying: “There have been so many stereotypes about who has eating disorders, and I don’t really fit the bill.”
The startup did not disclose the size of Washington’s investment, but they hope her investment and support can help highlight how eating disorders affect people from different backgrounds. It also intends to expand insurance access, specifically for patients using Medicaid.
Equip Health’s story
Equid Health was founded by Kristina Saffran, who was diagnosed with anorexia at the age of 10. Her eating disorder was at its peak during high school, where she was hospitalized four times for a total of seven months. She spent her sophomore year of high school doing family-based treatment(FBT), which Saffran says “saved her life.”
FBT is an outpatient behavioral treatment where families play an integral in the recovery process by planning and supervising meals and observing eating disorder behaviors. Though FBT saved Saffran’s life, after researching more into the treatment, she found that it is often inaccessible and has not been extensively studied for people of color, plus-size people, or LGBTQ+ folks.
This is why Saffran founded Equip, to give people with eating disorders from diverse backgrounds the core elements of FBT with a wider networking of peer and family mentors as well as medical, therapeutic, and dietary support.
Image: Kerry Washington/ Jimmy Kimmel Live
