Denver, Colo.—Eating Recovery Center Chief Science Officer Philip S. Mehler, MD, FACP, FAED, CEDS, received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Eating Disorders. Mehler is the only physician in the country to receive this prestigious award from both the AED and the International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals (IAEDP). The Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes a “senior individual in the field for her/his lifetime contributions to the Academy or to the field in general.” The award is only given “under exceptional circumstances.” He also received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals (IAEDP) in 2023.
Mehler is a pioneer in the field of eating disorders. His esteemed career spans over 35 years, during which time he founded the ACUTE Center for Eating Disorders in 2002. He’s the author of over 600 publications and five textbooks and has served on the editorial boards for multiple journals. He is recognized as the nation’s foremost medical expert on the medical complications of eating disorders. His medical research has shaped treatment for the most severe cases of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.
"Dr. Mehler has truly advanced the field of eating disorders by his unremitting focus on the medical aspects while creating the medical repertoire of playbooks to transform medical care,” said Eating Recovery Center Founding Chairman Ken Weiner, MD, CEDS, FAED. “His emblem is excellence; his achievement is staggering; and his influence has been unlimited. Staff, patients, and families have long loved and revered him for his unblemished decades of service to health care and to the eating disorder field—delivered flawlessly, with sensitivity, direction, and clarity of purpose.”
According to Weiner, Mehler’s work in the eating disorder field has become “incomparable and legendary.”
“He has long been recognized as one of the nation’s top internists, but also as an innovator, educator, hospital executive at Denver Health, and catalyst for change,” said Weiner.
Mehler said he was “humbled and grateful” to be nominated for this prestigious award.
“The medical care of those beset with severe eating disorders is certainly daunting, but anxiety and fear dissipate in the name of purposeful action,” said Mehler. “I am forever struck by the breadth of pathology, the perpetual mismatch between a physician’s level of knowledge, and the unpredictability inherent in critically ill patients with eating disorders as I assiduously tried to create new healing for these patients and their families.”
Mehler went on to say that throughout his career, he was fortunate to witness many miracles in treating those with extreme forms of eating disorders. His dedication to patients, research, and the field throughout his career made him a sought-after physician.
“This must further impel us all to flawlessly execute an evolving eating disorder strategy and achieve true advancement in this field,” said Mehler. “Yet we must allow the connection to and engagement with our patients to be paced at risk, because in the end their care is the real joy of and motif of this sacred endeavor.”
To view Dr. Mehler’s full biography, visit: www.eatingrecoverycenter.com/profile/philip-s-mehler