Eating disorder treatment program marketing: claims, stories, families and ads

People who look for an eating disorder program are rarely browsing. A parent may be reading at midnight after a pediatrician visit. An adult may have been putting off the search for years. A therapist or dietitian may be checking whether a client needs more support than an outpatient visit can give. Each of them needs the same thing from your website: a clear, calm account of what the program is, who it serves and how to start.

This guide covers the parts of marketing that are specific to eating disorder programs: how to describe the program, what to leave off the page, how to handle recovery stories, calls from families, crisis information, referral relationships and ads. If your program also treats substance use disorders, read our guide to addiction treatment marketing as well, because more rules apply.

Who reads your program pages

The National Institute of Mental Health describes eating disorders as serious illnesses marked by severe disturbances in a person’s eating behaviors. Your pages are read by people dealing with exactly that, and by the people around them. In practice there are three readers, and a good program site serves all of them.

• The person who may need care. They want to know what happens after they call, whether they will be judged, and whether the program treats people like them.
• A parent, partner or friend. They want to know how to start, what the program asks of families, what it costs and what insurance covers.
• A referring clinician. A therapist, dietitian, pediatrician or primary care physician wants admission criteria, levels of care, how to refer and how the program reports back.

Write for all three on one page, or give each a short page of its own. A page for referring clinicians makes it easy for professionals who already know a patient to send that person to you.

Describe the program plainly

The most useful program page is factual. Say which levels of care you offer and what each one involves at your program: how many hours or days a week, where it takes place, and whether any of it is by video. Say who you treat by age group, and which conditions and situations you are and are not set up for. Name the disciplines on the team, such as physicians, psychiatrists, therapists, dietitians and nurses, and state each credential exactly as it was granted.

Then cover what families ask on the first call: how admission works, what an assessment involves, which insurance plans you work with and how you check benefits, what self-pay costs, and what happens if someone needs a higher or lower level of care than you provide. If you refer people elsewhere when they need more medical support, say so. A program that is honest about its limits is easier to refer to.

Our medical website design work builds program sites around these questions, with a clear path to call or request an assessment from every page.

What to leave off the page

We leave numbers about bodies out of eating disorder program marketing entirely: no weights, no BMI figures, no calorie counts, no sizes and no before-and-after body photos. None of them is needed to explain treatment or to help a family choose a program. The same goes for photos that center on bodies, scales, measuring tapes or plates of food.

Choose images of people of different ages and backgrounds in ordinary settings, the building, the team and the spaces where care happens. Keep the tone steady. Words such as battle, fight or war may describe how someone feels, but they belong in that person’s own story, told with their permission, not in your headlines.

Keep weight loss language out of every page and ad as well. If your organization also runs a weight management service, keep it separate from the eating disorder program in your site structure and in your campaigns. Our guide to weight loss clinic marketing covers the rules for that kind of service.

Claims about treatment and recovery

The FTC Health Products Compliance Guidance explains how the FTC applies its advertising law to health claims. Its examples are mostly about products, but as the guidance notes, Section 12 of the FTC Act (15 U.S.C. 52) covers false advertisements for services as well. The guidance says advertisers must have a reasonable basis for their claims before an ad runs, and that the substantiation standard is a rigorous one, particularly when claims relate to health. It also says the FTC views claims from the standpoint of the intended audience, and that marketers should consider each ad as a whole, including images, not individual phrases.

For an eating disorder program, that rules out a number of familiar lines:

• Recovery rates, success rates or relapse figures you cannot support with reliable evidence that matches your own program and the people you treat.
• Words such as cure, guaranteed, full recovery or proven, applied to your program.
• Timelines such as recover in 30 days.
• Comparisons such as the most effective program or better outcomes than other centers.

Describe what you do instead: the treatments you use, who delivers them, how plans are set and reviewed, and how families take part. If you collect outcome data, have a health care attorney and a qualified researcher look at what it can and cannot support before any of it appears in marketing. Our guide to psychiatric practice marketing covers claims about mental health care in more detail.

Recovery stories and alumni

A story from a former patient can help someone take the first step. It is also a consumer endorsement, and federal rules apply to it.

Under 16 CFR 255.2(a), an ad using consumer endorsements is interpreted as representing that the service is effective for the purpose shown, and the advertiser must have the same substantiation it would need to make that claim directly. The rule adds that consumer endorsements themselves are not competent and reliable scientific evidence. Under 255.2(b), an endorsement about a key attribute will likely be read as representing what people will generally achieve. If you cannot show that the story is representative, the ad should clearly and conspicuously disclose the generally expected performance, and you need support for that disclosure too.

The FTC Health Products Compliance Guidance adds that testimonials reporting results more dramatic than users can generally expect are likely to be deceptive, and that statements such as results not typical do not cure the deception. In practice, that means stories about the experience of treatment are much easier to use honestly than stories about results.

Privacy is the second issue. Under 45 CFR 164.508(a)(3), a covered entity must obtain an authorization for any use or disclosure of protected health information for marketing, with narrow exceptions for face-to-face communications and promotional gifts of nominal value. Get a signed HIPAA authorization before using a former patient’s name, image, voice or story, make clear it is voluntary and that care does not depend on it, and keep a record of it. For a minor, the person who signs depends on who has authority under the rules in the next section. Our guide to patient testimonials covers the authorization in detail.

Calls from parents and family members

Many first calls come from someone other than the person who needs care. Intake staff, answering services and any automated phone or chat tool need clear rules for these calls, because HIPAA treats parents of minors and family of adults differently.

For an unemancipated minor, 45 CFR 164.502(g)(3) says that if under applicable law a parent or guardian has authority to make health care decisions for the minor, the provider must treat that person as the minor’s personal representative. The same section lists exceptions, for example where the minor may lawfully consent to the care, and those exceptions depend on state law. Your counsel should tell you how the rules work in the states you serve.

For an adult patient, a parent or partner is not automatically entitled to information. 45 CFR 164.510(b) permits a provider to share information directly relevant to a family member’s involvement in the person’s care, and when the patient is present and able to decide, it ties that to the patient’s agreement, an opportunity to object, or a reasonable inference that the patient does not object.

For marketing, that means two practical things. A family member asking general questions about the program can always be helped without discussing any patient. And your follow-up emails, texts and retargeting should never reveal to a household that someone in it contacted an eating disorder program. Our guide to HIPAA marketing rules covers communications in general.

Crisis information on every page

Some people who reach your site will be in crisis. SAMHSA describes 988 as offering 24/7 support for mental health, substance use and more, by call, text or chat. Put a short line in the header or footer of every page that says the program does not provide emergency services, and that people in crisis can call, text or chat 988 or call 911. Use the same line in after-hours voicemail, contact form confirmations and any automated replies.

If you use an AI front desk or an answering service, give it a script that recognizes a crisis call and points the caller to 988 or 911 at once, and test it before launch and after every change.

Referral relationships with other clinicians

Relationships with therapists, dietitians and physicians matter to any program. Build them on information, not incentives. Offer a clear referral page and form, admission criteria, a named contact and a reliable report back on the people they send.

That report back is usually permitted. 45 CFR 164.506(c) says a covered entity may disclose protected health information for treatment activities of a health care provider. Keep it to what the referring clinician needs for the patient’s care, and keep it out of newsletters and promotional mailings.

Do not pay, or give anything of value, per referral or per admission, and be careful with any lead source that sells inquiries. Our guide to buying patient leads explains the risks, and our medical lead generation page explains how we build a path that brings inquiries directly to the program instead.

Ads, tracking and audience limits

Health is one of the sensitive interest categories in Google’s personalized advertising policy. Google says advertisers promoting products and services within sensitive interest categories are unable to use advertiser-curated audiences, so a campaign cannot rely on lists of past visitors or patients. Search campaigns built around the services you offer, the areas you serve and the questions people ask are the usual starting point.

Google’s Healthcare and medicines policy restricts the promotion of recovery-oriented drug and alcohol addiction services and requires certification in some locations. It says services unrelated to drug and alcohol addiction are out of scope of that policy. If your program also promotes substance use treatment, that policy and its certification apply to those ads. Our Google Ads service plans campaigns around these limits.

Tracking deserves the same care. A pixel on an assessment request page can tell an ad platform that a visitor looked for eating disorder care. Read our guide to tracking pixels on practice websites before adding any tag to the site.

If your program also treats substance use

Some eating disorder programs also diagnose or treat substance use disorders. Under 42 CFR 2.11, a program for Part 2 purposes includes a person, other than a general medical facility, that holds itself out as providing, and provides, substance use disorder diagnosis, treatment or referral for treatment, as well as identified units and staff within general medical facilities. If your program fits that definition and is federally assisted, Part 2 confidentiality rules apply to those records in addition to HIPAA. Our guide to addiction treatment marketing covers what that means for outreach.

Illustration

A program offers day treatment and intensive outpatient care for teens and adults. Its old home page led with a recovery rate and a photo of a smiling patient holding an apple. The rewrite opens with the levels of care, who each serves, and a button to request an assessment. A separate page for clinicians lists admission criteria and a referral form. A family page explains what parents can expect on the first call and how insurance is checked. The recovery rate is gone until counsel has reviewed the data behind it. A 988 line sits in the footer of every page, and the after-hours line points callers to 988 or 911.

Illustration of the approach, not client data.

Common mistakes

• Outcome numbers without support. A recovery rate on the home page is a claim that needs evidence matching your program and patients.
• Body images and numbers. Weights, sizes, BMI and before-and-after photos have no place in program marketing.
• Stories without authorization. Every former patient story needs a signed HIPAA authorization and an honest frame.
• Follow-ups that reveal care. A text or email that names the program can tell a household more than the person wanted.
• No crisis line. Every page, voicemail and automated reply should give 988 and 911.
• Paying for referrals. Gifts or payments per referral or admission create legal risk and damage trust with clinicians.

How we help

We build and run websites, local search, ads and phone handling for independent practices and programs. For an eating disorder program, that means plain program pages for patients, families and referring clinicians, crisis information across the site and the phone path, search campaigns within Google’s health limits, and tracking set up so it does not send sensitive page data to ad platforms. We do not sell lead lists, we do not write outcome claims, and we do not promise admissions or rankings. See our medical lead generation page for how the parts fit together, or the healthcare marketing rules guide for related topics.

Sources

• NIMH: Eating Disorders (last reviewed December 2024)
• SAMHSA: 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline
• FTC: Health Products Compliance Guidance (December 2022)
• 15 U.S.C. 52: Dissemination of false advertisements (FTC Act Section 12)
• 16 CFR 255.2: Consumer endorsements
• 45 CFR 164.502: Uses and disclosures of protected health information, general rules
• 45 CFR 164.506: Uses and disclosures to carry out treatment, payment, or health care operations
• 45 CFR 164.508: Uses and disclosures for which an authorization is required
• 45 CFR 164.510: Uses and disclosures requiring an opportunity to agree or object
• 42 CFR 2.11: Definitions (Part 2)
• Google Ads: Healthcare and medicines policy
• Google Ads: Restricted targeting in Personalized advertising

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