Dr. Debra Safer

Biography

Debra Safer specializes in treating eating and weight disorders and has broadened her clinical focus to leverage an understanding of human behavior to address mental health impacts of climate change. She obtained her MD from the University of California, San Francisco, where she also completed her residency and post-doctoral fellowship focusing on eating disorder intervention research in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Additionally, she earned a master’s degree from UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, concentrating on the intersection of fiction narratives and medicine. With over 20 years of practice in psychiatry, Dr. Safer is the Co-Director of the Stanford Adult Eating and Weight Disorders Program. Her research and clinical work primarily focus on eating disorders and obesity, particularly improving patient outcomes through the development and conduct of clinical intervention trials to establish evidence-based treatments. She has co-authored multiple peer-reviewed articles, books, and chapters, presenting her work nationally and internationally. Her research interests also include designing interventions for post-bariatric surgery patients, employing virtual reality in treating eating disorders, and evaluating evidence-based treatments in real-world settings.

Research Interests

Experience

Courses