Happy World IBD Day from Digestive Disease Week (DDW)!

Last weekend, a number of us celebrated World IBD Day from DDW in San Diego, CA. We advocates sat in sessions and conferences brainstorming the best ways in which to address the gaps in IBD care and bring those ideas forward to doctors leading the quest to improve our care. We discussed so many topics from mental health to support and caregiving in addition to sexual health and intimacy. We talked to Drs. Aline Charabaty & Neilanjan Nandi about how to take those topics forward to the larger community and have the tough conversations with our own providers. All in all, we, as a team, collaborated to bring together a variety of perspectives to make the patient’s voice heard in order to improve IBD care for all of us.

In the below video, Brooke Abbott (Crazy Creole Mommy Chronicles), Amber Tresca (About IBD), Natalie Hayden (Lights, Camera, Crohn’s), Shawn Bethea (Chronically Strong) & I (Own Your Crohn’s) tell you why we attend conferences such as DDW and why we advocate:

For many of us patient advocates, it isn’t always easy to travel with our illnesses but we are so impassioned about our cause and furthering the voices of our community that it gives us deep meaning to do so. For me, specifically, if I have survived the horrors of this disease and multiple rounds of surgery, what better to say thank you to the world than to give back to a community that has given me so much?

Even though World IBD Day 2019 has come and gone, let’s remember that everyday is World IBD Day for so many of us. Let’s celebrate life, love and happiness as we manage the ups and downs of our conditions. Let’s own our Crohn’s, own our IBD, and make every single day a celebration of how far we have come and how much of an impact we are making as a patient community. Let’s keep creating awareness in order for us to receive the best care possible.

**A special thanks to Janssen Biotech, Inc. for bringing us patient advocates together to spearhead unmet needs in our community. All thoughts & opinions expressed are my own.

~HAPPY WORLD IBD DAY 2019!~

~~LOVE, LIGHT & PEACE ALWAYS~~

As always, I’d love any feedback you’d like to share! Feedback is how we bring about change in the world of IBD!