Adrienne Juarascio, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and behavioral scientist whose research focuses on the development, evaluation, and dissemination of innovative treatments for eating disorders and obesity. Her program of research has two primary emphases: (1) advancing acceptance- and mindfulness-based behavioral interventions that target core mechanisms maintaining eating pathology and elevated weight, including emotion dysregulation, impulsivity, and altered reward sensitivity, and (2) leveraging digital health technologies to enhance treatment delivery, skill acquisition, and long-term behavior change.

Dr. Juarascio has played a leading role in advancing mindfulness- and acceptance-based behavioral treatments for binge-spectrum eating disorders. Her work has demonstrated that interventions targeting mechanisms such as distress intolerance, alexithymia, and values clarity can produce meaningful improvements in eating-disorder symptoms and may be particularly beneficial for individuals with more severe pathology. In addition to developing and evaluating these interventions, she has contributed to the identification of mechanisms and moderators of treatment response and has led the development of several validated measures assessing psychological acceptance, cognitive defusion, and values clarity that support mechanism-focused treatment research across the field.

A second major focus of Dr. Juarascio’s work is the innovation of technology-supported behavioral interventions for eating and weight disorders. She has led the development and evaluation of smartphone-based, just-in-time adaptive interventions designed to support skill use during high-risk moments in daily life and has contributed to emerging work using wearable sensors and passive data collection to detect risk for disordered eating behaviors in real time. In addition, she has developed and co-developed behavioral and technology-supported interventions for obesity and co-occurring binge eating. Through these contributions, Dr. Juarascio has established a program of research focused on mechanism-driven, scalable behavioral interventions that improve both treatment effectiveness and accessibility for individuals with eating and weight disorders.