Welcome to Hue Wellness: A Note from Our Founders

If you had told me, early in my career, that I would one day be running a practice dedicated entirely to eating and weight challenges in neurodiverse populations, I probably would have smiled politely and said nothing. Not because the need wasn't there. It absolutely was. But because the need was so large, so overlooked, and so difficult to address that it was hard to imagine anyone building something specifically designed to meet it.

And yet, here we are.

Hue Wellness grew out of years of clinical work in Central Massachusetts, where I kept encountering the same quiet crisis, again and again. Individuals with autism, intellectual disabilities, ADHD, and OCD who were struggling profoundly with food and weight. Adults who had been told for decades that their eating habits were simply a behavior problem. Children whose families had tried every intervention they could find and still couldn't get their child to eat more than four foods. Young people whose relationship with their own bodies had become a source of shame, confusion, and pain that no one around them knew how to address.

What struck me most was not the complexity of the clinical picture, though it was genuinely complex. It was the isolation. These families were navigating some of the most difficult health challenges imaginable largely alone, without clinicians who understood neurodiverse populations, without programs designed for their reality, and without a community of others who truly got it.

We didn't build Hue Wellness because we thought we had all the answers. We built it because we believed these individuals and families deserved better than what existed.

When I met Dr. Rosanna Alvarez, I knew immediately that something different was possible. Rosanna is a physician and registered dietitian who brings both the medical depth and the human warmth that this work demands. She also brings something I think is equally essential: the lived experience of navigating complex systems on behalf of patients who are too often overlooked. Together, we built Hue Wellness around a simple and unwavering conviction: every person, regardless of diagnosis, body size, or communication ability, deserves access to compassionate, evidence-based, specialized care.

Our mission has two dimensions that we hold together, always.

The first is deeply personal. We want to reduce suffering. We want to help the young man who has eaten the same three foods since he was five years old take his first real step toward variety, and feel safe doing it. We want to support the family who has watched their loved one's weight climb for years, knowing the health consequences are mounting, and finally give them tools that actually work. We want to sit with the individual who has struggled with bingeing in secret, consumed by shame, and help them understand that what they are experiencing has a name, a neurobiological basis, and a treatment path. The human cost of eating and weight challenges in neurodiverse populations is enormous, and it is largely invisible. We want to be part of changing that.

The second dimension is broader. The financial cost of unmanaged weight in this population is staggering. We have watched clients accumulate hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical expenses, hospitalizations, surgeries, and ongoing medication costs that are entirely predictable consequences of conditions that could have been addressed earlier, with the right support. These costs are borne by individuals, by families, by the Massachusetts Department of Developmental Services, and by taxpayers. They are, to a significant degree, preventable. Prevention requires investment, and we know that. But the return on that investment, measured in both human wellbeing and long-term healthcare savings, is real and substantial.

Prevention is not just the compassionate choice. It is the fiscally responsible one.

We are not a large organization. We are a small, dedicated team working in Central Massachusetts, available in both English and Spanish, with the capacity to serve up to 500 clients. We are not trying to be everything to everyone. We are trying to be the right thing for the people we serve: thoughtful, evidence-based, humble about what we don't know, and deeply committed to the individuals and families who trust us with some of the most personal aspects of their lives.

This blog is part of that commitment. Over the coming weeks and months, we will be sharing what we are learning: about eating disorders in neurodiverse populations, about the neuroscience of hunger and restriction and bingeing, about the tools and techniques that help, and about the remarkable resilience we see in the individuals and families we work with every day. We will try to make the science accessible, the clinical concepts practical, and the stories, always shared with care and privacy, real enough to be useful.

We are grateful you are here. Whether you are a parent, a caregiver, a DDS worker, a clinician, or someone navigating your own relationship with food and weight, we hope this space becomes a resource you can return to.

We are just getting started. And we are glad to be doing this work.

With warmth and gratitude,

Dr. Russell Kennedy, PsyD, MA

Dr. Rosanna Alvarez, MD, RD

Co-Founders, Hue Wellness

Central Massachusetts