Lucrecia Ramírez Restrepo is a Psychiatrist and Associate Professor in the Psychiatry Department, University of Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia. She is also Coordinator of the Women’s Mental Health Academic Group, Medical School, University of Antioquia

Among her many positions, Dr. Ramírez Restrepo served as Coordinator in the Teenagers’ Ward as a general practitioner in Antioquia’s Mental Hospital, and as full time psychiatric doctor at Antioquia’s Mental Hospital from August 1990 until August 1991.

Since April 1990, she has served as an undergraduate and graduate school lecturer in Clinical Psychiatry at the University of Antioquia’s Medical School. She is currently Associate Professor of the Department of Psychiatry, Medical School, and Coordinator of Women’s Mental Health Academic Area, and also director of the Action-Research group on Eating Disorders (anorexia and bulimia), and participant in the research group Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Action.

Medellín, Colombia, is known as the fashion capital of Latin America, but it also holds another world record: it has the highest rate of anorexia, bulimia and other eating disorders, standing at 17.7 percent of the population of adolescent girls in 2003. That compares with 5.0 percent in Spain and 10.2 percent in the US.

After doing significant research on the problem, Dr. Ramírez-Restrepo created the Network for Prevention of Anorexia and Bulimia and launched ‘Project Skinny,’ with the slogan “Skinny, Pretty, Happy?,” to combat what she found was the widespread belief among not just adolescents, but also their mothers, fathers and teachers, that being skinny equates to being pretty and happy.

The campaign uses creative advertisements on billboards around the city and in magazines and newspapers to make its point in graphic fashion, showing pictures of strange-looking “skinny” elephants, rhinoceroses and zebras, along with the tagline “It looks weird, right?…and you, how do you look?”

As the First Lady of the City of Medellín (2004-2007), she coordinated the following projects: “Anorexia-Bulimia prevention network”, “Teen pregnancy prevention network”, “Sexual Violence Prevention Network”, “Medellin’s Public Women Network”, “Medellin’s Talented Women Network”, and “Medellin’s Women of Academic Excellence Network”. (http://www.iadb.org/features-and-web-stories/2006-08/english/eating-disorders-as-a-public-health-emergency-3249.html)

Currently, at the University of Antioquia, Dr. Ramírez-Restrepo directs the academic project “A room for her own”, in development process, a virtual mass media-academic one that promotes women´s health as a human right throughout a very innovative strategy based on the concept of public communication – blog, web page, virtual medical school course, and electronic women´s democracy. Dr. Ramírez Restrepo is also in private practice as a Psychiatrist (with emphasis on women’s mental health) at SOMA Hospital since October 1990. She is well published and has received numerous awards and accolades for her work.