By Kirsten Bruce, Founder & Owner, VIVA! Communications

Awareness does not equate to access. Visibility does not equal system reform. And without strategy, storytelling alone fails to improve health outcomes.

In eating disorders – one of Australia’s most complex and high-risk mental health conditions – we’ve reached a pivotal moment. Public understanding is improving. Research is accelerating. Policy conversations are gaining traction.

Yet families nation-wide are continuing to struggle to navigate fragmented pathways to care for their loved ones. This gap is not just clinical. It’s communicative.

The missing link between research, policy & community

Over the past decade, our team at VIVA! Communications has supported national and international (USA and NZ) initiatives advancing eating disorder research and treatment access, including:

• The Anorexia Nervosa Genetics Initiative (ANGI);
• Eating Disorders Genetics Initiative (EDGI);
• Eating Disorders Genetics Initiative 2 (EDGI2) with QIMR Berghofer
• The national rollout of the InsideOut Institute for Eating Disorders’s free online treatment hub.

Each of these initiatives represents progress. However, progress also reveals structural challenges:

• Research that does not always reach the communities it aims to serve;
• Services that exist but remain under-utilised due to stigma or lack of awareness; and
• Policy ambition that struggles to translate into lived impact.

This is where strategic health communications must evolve. Not as an afterthought. Not as a campaign overlay. But as embedded infrastructure within reform initiatives.

Lived experience is a reform driver

I am personally proud to now serve as a Board member of endED Eating Disorders, an organisation I am deeply passionate about. My involvement inspired VIVA! to take on endED as our 2026 pro-bono health communications partner.

endED is an extraordinary Australian organisation dedicated to supporting individuals and families affected by eating disorders, and to driving greater national awareness of a condition that pervades far too many lives.

The organisation was born from lived experience. Over 24 years, founders Mark Forbes and Gay Forbes sought help for their daughters, only to discover that the care their family required didn’t exist in Australia. What began as fortnightly gatherings with other families navigating similar challenges, evolved into a powerful vision: a holistic, home-like approach to eating disorder treatment – something available overseas, but then missing in Australia. With the support of the Sunshine Coast community, that vision became reality.

Today, endED’s programs, resources and community initiatives, including the House of Hope, are creating meaningful change in eating disorder recovery and support. This is more than a service model. It is a case study in how lived experience identifies systemic blind spots and builds solutions.

The question is now whether our sector is prepared to amplify and integrate these solutions at scale.

Communications as system architecture

If we’re serious about improving outcomes in eating disorders, and further across mental health, we must reframe the role of communications.

Strategic communications should:

• Translate research into accessible public understanding;
• Shape responsible media narratives;
• Reduce stigma through sustained, evidence-informed framing;
• Support policy advocacy with clarity and cohesion; and
• Connect community innovation to national reform agendas.

When designed deliberately, communications becomes part of system architecture. It drives participation in research. It increases early help-seeking. It strengthens funding arguments. It aligns stakeholders around shared priorities.

Without communications, reform fragments.

A call to health leaders, funders & policy makers

The sector needs to ask:

• Are we investing in communications at the level required to support the reforms for which we are calling?
• Are we embedding communications expertise early in research design, service rollout, and policy development, or only engaging it at launch?
• Are we equipping lived-experience organisations with the strategic voice they require to influence national conversations?

To close the gap between intention and impact, communications must be funded, structured, and measured as a core reform lever, not a discretionary add-on.

Moving from awareness to accountability

VIVA!’s partnership with endED reflects a broader commitment: to align strategy, research, lived experience, and advocacy in ways that strengthen the entire ecosystem.

This work cannot sit with agencies or community organisations alone. It requires collaboration across research institutes, government, philanthropy, clinical leaders, advocacy groups, and communications professionals.

If you are leading reform in eating disorders, mental health, or broader health systems transformation, I invite you to consider: Is communications informing your reform, or merely marketing it?

The next phase of impact in eating disorder care will not be driven by awareness alone.

It will come from deliberate alignment. From integration across research, services, and policy. From treating communications not as amplification, but as infrastructure. And from ensuring lived experience, research, and reform do not move in silos, but move forward, strategically, cohesively, and in true partnership.