Lyme Wellness Initiative Events
Join us for a virtual conversation
Optimizing life with Lyme disease: Transforming your personal story
When: May 22, 2023 11:30 am to 1:00 pm Eastern time
Join Harvard Medical School faculty and practicing physicians Annie Brewster, MD and Nomi Levy-Carrick, MD, MPhil for a conversation about rewriting your narrative in the face of serious illness. Dr. Levy-Carrick will discuss the principles of trauma-informed care and explain how a trauma-informed approach can empower patients and help to create a collaborative patient-provider dynamic. Dr. Brewster will present the science that supports the health benefits of storytelling and, drawing on research as well as her own experience as a multiple sclerosis patient, will share practical strategies for integrating your medical diagnosis into your personal narrative for the sake of optimal health.
Annie Brewster, MD
Founder and Executive Director at Health Story Collaborative
Annie is an Assistant Professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, a practicing physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston, a writer and a storyteller. She is also a patient, diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2001. In response to the disconnection she experienced in healthcare, both as a patient and a provider, and motivated by her belief in the power of stories, she started recording patient narratives in 2010. Integrating her personal experiences with the research supporting the health benefits of narrative, she founded Health Story Collaborative (HSC) in 2013. HSC is dedicated to helping individuals navigating health challenges find meaning, and ultimately heal, through storytelling. She is excited by interdisciplinary, cross-institutional collaborations that break through resistance to change. She is widely published in the press and is author of The Healing Power of Storytelling: Using Personal Narrative to Navigate Illness, Trauma, and Loss (2022).
Nomi C. Levy-Carrick, MD, MPhil
Vice Chair, Clinical Programs, Dept. of Psychiatry at Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Nomi is a medical psychiatrist who serves as Vice Chair for Clinical Programs in the Department of Psychiatry at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, as well as co-Chair of the BWH Trauma-Informed Care Collaborative and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Nomi joined BWH in 2016, serving as a psychiatrist embedded in the medical ICU, as well as liaison to the Burn & Trauma unit, and continues to serve as psychiatric consultant to the Critical Illness Recovery Program and the Functional Outcomes and Recovery after Trauma Emergencies (FORTE) project at the Center of Surgery and Public Health. Through the COVID pandemic, in addition to her clinical responsibilities, she focused on innovative work developing trauma-informed approaches to program development that advance mental health access and equity amidst the continuing mental health pandemic. Her abiding interest in is integrating mental and physical health approaches in ways that are mutually reinforcing.