The Health Design Podcast

After growing up in rural Southeast Alaska, Orion studied business and social entrepreneurship at the University of Oregon where he received the Oregon Student Impact Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2013. While finishing school, Orion co-founded Orchid Health with the vision of creating a new model of primary care that better serves both healthcare professionals and patients alike. Over the past...

Emily Parks is a chronically ill young professional based out of San Francisco working in behavioral health and patient advocacy. Having been diagnosed with short bowel syndrome in infancy and unable to absorb nutrition orally, she was dependent on Parenteral Nutrition until receiving an isolated small bowel transplant from MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. Combining her expertise in behavio...

Gary David is a Professor Sociology and Experience Design at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts. His work focuses on how to create experiences that bring people together to create a sense of connections and belonging. In experience design, he specializes in customer, user, learning, employee, and patient experiences. He also researches the design and use of technology for the workplace....

Trevor Maxwell, 45, has been living with stage IV colon cancer since March of 2018. He has undergone five major surgeries, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and a clinical trial. He lives in Maine with his wife and two teenage daughters. In January of 2020, Trevor founded Man Up to Cancer, a purpose-driven company and support community that inspires men to connect and avoid isolation during our cancer...

Sarita Edwards is CEO & President at the E.WE Foundation, a nonprofit healthcare advocacy organization. She began her efforts of advocacy and public policy after her 5th child was diagnosed in utero with rare disease Edwards Syndrome or Full Trisomy 18. Sarita is recognized as a world's top patient expert and social health ambassador. She is an award winning advocate and host of the Being Rare Pod...

Doug Lindsay has spent the last two decades investigating and tackling rare, complicated medical conditions – first in himself and his family and now through his Personal Medical Consultant service. An innovator, Doug partners with clients and experts to make new things happen. He works to get clients who are stuck in the medical system unstuck. To aid him in his work, he strives to understand hea...

Michael W. Rabow, MD, FAAHPM, the Helen Diller Family Chair in Palliative Care, is a Professor of Clinical Medicine and Urology at UCSF. He is the Associate Chief of Education & Mentoring in the Division of Palliative Medicine in the Department of Medicine, and the Medical Director of Palliative Care at UCSF’s Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center (https://cancer.ucsf.edu/people/profiles...

Jared Rubenstein is a pediatric palliative care doctor and medical educator. He is passionate about using communication tools, creativity, and humor to help people talk about hard things. He lives in Houston, Texas, USA with his wonderful family. Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwzLhSI2v1ySPbU-LPTZzbQ And twitter handle is @DrJRubenstein

Marijke Vroomen Durning always wanted to be a writer but her teachers and parents didn’t support that choice; they told her to choose something more practical. She became a nurse As an RN, Marijke literally worked with patients from life to death. Her first job was working with new mothers and their infants on a postpartum ward. One of her last clinical jobs was in a hospice. But Marijke’s dream o...

Seth Rotberg is a patient advocate, community connector, and motivational speaker. His passion is driven by his mother’s 17-year battle with the rare, genetic disease known as Huntington’s Disease (HD). Through his 13 years of experience navigating the healthcare system, he’s worked with different healthcare stakeholders including: patient advocacy organizations, patient influencers, pharma/biotec...

After suffering a stroke and dissecting three of the four arteries that supply blood flow to her brain, Pam Mace was diagnosed with Fibromuscular Dysplasia (FMD). There was no patient organization at the time, and Pam quickly learned there was a lack of knowledge and understanding of FMD. She applied her nursing knowledge and skills to raise awareness of FMD and to promote education. FMDSA was inc...

Ryan Prior covered health, science, and wellness during the Covid-19 pandemic as a journalist based at CNN's World Headquarters in Atlanta. He specializes in feature writing, going deep with characters who are on a mission, and who have a message for all of us. He is fascinated by figures, large and small, who dedicate their lives to changing our world, profiling Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi,...

Dr. Petrosoniak is an emergency physician and trauma team leader at St. Michael's Hospital. He's the inaugural lead for translational simulation at Unity Health Toronto. He’s an assistant professor at the University of Toronto where his research work focuses on 1) using in situ simulation to improve systems and design and 2) optimizing the care of bleeding patients. He's also co-principal of Advan...

Richie Kahn is a public health professional by training, clinical researcher by trade, and patient advocate by necessity. He is intensely passionate about incorporating patient and caregiver perspectives into the clinical development process, ultimately reducing the time it takes to bring promising new therapeutics to the patients that need them most.

Sadie Elisseou, MD is a primary care physician in the Boston VA healthcare system, a Clinical Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Adjunct Instructor of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine, and a nationally recognized expert in the field of trauma-informed care (TIC), an organizational framework for supporting survivors of various forms of trauma. Dr. Elisseou's award-...

Catherine Foot is Director of Phoenix Insights, a new think tank set up to transform the way society responds to the possibilities of longer lives. Phoenix Insights is part of The Phoenix Group, the UK’s largest long-term savings and retirement business. Catherine is a research and policy specialist in ageing and longevity, and from 2015 to 2021 was Director of Evidence at the Centre for Ageing Be...

Gay has been active in the Rare Disease community for over two decades and continues her efforts to build and support patient and family advocacy. Co-founded ADCY5.org, the foundation for ADCY5-related dyskinesia. ADCY5.org supports world-renowned researchers who study the gene and its variant. She continues to build a community of hundreds with this disease, when they started with only 1. She is...

Laurie had a 25 year career in financial services and was President of Los Angeles-based fixed income software firm Capital Management Sciences (IDC Fixed Income Analytics). Diagnosed with incurable Stage IV follicular non-Hodgkin lymphoma at the age of 46 in 2006, Laurie was forced to retire to focus on her health and had 12 years of continuous cancer treatment. She had seven different lines of t...

Benjamin F. Miller, PsyD, is the President of Well Being Trust who oversees the implementation of the foundation’s strategies, full portfolio of investments, and partnerships. Dr. Miller’s previous role as Chief Strategy Officer of Well Being Trust ensured alignment across the foundation’s grants, research, partnerships and policy recommendations. A clinical psychologist by training, Dr. Miller is...

Theresa Brown, RN is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Shift and Healing: When a Nurse Becomes a Patient. She has been a contributor to the New York Times, CNN.com, the American Journal of Nursing, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. She has been a guest on MSNBC Live and NPR’s Fresh Air. Her first book was Critical Care, and during what...

Michelle Litchman, PhD, FNP-BC, FAANP, FADCES, FAAN is an Assistant Professor at the University of Utah College of Nursing, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine, and Nurse Practitioner at the Utah Diabetes and Endocrinology Center. She serves as the Medical Director of the Intensive Diabetes Education and Support Program at the University of Utah, a multidisciplinary diabetes self-mana...

Danny van Leeuwen, Opa, MPH, RN, a two-legged cis-gender, old white man of privilege, wears many hats in healthcare. He’s known as Health Hats – an action catalyst, patient-caregiver activist, a person with disabilities from Multiple Sclerosis, care partner to several family members’ end-of-life journeys, a registered nurse for over 45 years, informaticist, and podcaster (https://www.health-hats.c...

Tristan Bilash (he/him/human) is a clinical oncology social worker, writer, speaker, Stage 3C ovarian cancer survivor, ADHD thriver, transgender man, and inclusive health advocate. Tristan has presented at numerous provincial and national conferences in Canada, including being a keynote speaker for the Canadian Association of Psychosocial Oncology (CAPO) 2020 National Conference. As a transgender...

Ashley Randolph saw a strong need to change the conversation when it comes to how Black NICU Families are treated in the NICU, at home and in school. Systemic racism is prevalent in every setting for these families and sets the stage for a vulnerable infant to grow into a child witnessing healthcare, therapeutic and educational environments that are inadequate in terms of racial and healthy equity...

Maram is recognized nationally, locally, and statewide for her work. She received the 2019 Diversity Health Care Leader from the National Diversity Council. She was awarded the Ascendant Award from Leadership Austin. She has demonstrated community stewardship that exhibits the core values of Leadership Austin: Community Trusteeship, Inclusiveness, Collaborative Decision-Making, and Personal Respon...