Elizabeth Jameson

Elizabeth Jameson is an artist and writer who explores what it means to live in an imperfect body as part of the universal human experience. Before her diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, she served as a public interest lawyer representing incarcerated children; she later represented children living with chronic illnesses and disabilities in their attempts to receive medically necessary care.

As her disease progressed, she began using her MRI’s to create art as a way of reclaiming agency of her own medical data. She transformed the unsettling, clinical images into work that invites people to open up conversations about what it means to have an illness or disability. Her work is part of permanent collections both nationally and internationally, including the National Institutes of Health, major universities, and medical schools. She now writes personal essays and speaks across the country sharing her experiences living with illness and disability. Her essay, “Losing Touch, Finding Intimacy,” was included in the New York Times book, About Us, released in September 2019 by Norton Publishing.

Many of her lectures at medical schools and symposiums have been recorded and shared, including her TedX talk, “Learning to Celebrate and Embrace Our Imperfect Bodies.”

IG: @_elizabethjameson_

Twitter: @jamesonfineart

Kyle Kranich

Kyle Kranich, 31 years young, lives in Asheville, NC and has been battling aggressive Primary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis since age 20. Up until that point, he was a very active guy that played basketball, surfed, and ran half marathons. Now because of the progressive nature of this condition, he relies on mobility aids like walkers/rollators or wheelchairs. He is currently a full-time student at Colorado State University Global and is a content creator sharing his journey with MS in hopes of reaching others navigating similar circumstances. His IG page is amassing an enthusiastic and appreciative following through his candor, humor and willingness to “tell it like it is.”

IG: @gottakeepgoing_

Dr. Annie Brewster

Dr. Annie Brewster is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and a practicing Internist at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. She is also a patient, diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2001. In 2010, motivated by her belief in the power of stories to improve health, Annie started recording patient narratives. Over the years, her finished audio stories have been featured on Boston’s local NPR station, WBUR. In doing this work, Annie has seen first-hand how the process of storytelling is itself therapeutic, both for the storytellers and the listeners. Research supports this claim. Health Story Collaborative, the 501 (c)(3) organization she founded in 2013, grew out of this work. She is committed to keeping the patient voice alive and to reclaiming the power of stories in healthcare. 

Her work has been published on NPR.ORG, the New York Times Well Blog, and in the Boston Globe and MS Focus magazine. She has been featured in Harvard Medicine magazine, and on the cable television program “About Health with Jeanne Blake”. She also presented at TEDx Fenway in 2014 on harnessing the healing power of stories.

IG: @healthstorycollaborative

Twitter: @HealthStoryCo