Blog
Navigating IBD & Sexual Orientation / Gender Identity with ‘Pride’
Happy National Coming Out Day to everyone, including those who are ‘out’ of the closet, those who are hoping to come out soon, those who are struggling with being in the closet, and our allies! Did you know that only about 14% of HCPs talk to their patients about...
Navigating Medical School with IBD: Rohit’s Insights and Suggestions
Did you know? As of 2019, only 4.6% of U.S. medical students have disclosed some kind of disability to their medical school, which compares to the 25% of adults in the U.S. who have some form of disability according to the CDC. As an IBD patient advocate, my goal has...
Highlights from DDW 2025 with SAIA’s IBDesis’ Patient Team
Reviewed by Tina Aswani-Omprakash Our patient advocate team, SAIA's IBDesis, was honored to attend Digestive Disease Week (DDW) between May 4 – 6th, 2025, in San Diego, California. DDW 2025 allowed us to learn more about the latest research and developments in the GI...
Tanya’s Pregnancy and Postpartum Journey Living with Crohn’s Disease in India
Read the first part of Tanya’s Pregnancy Journey Living with Crohn’s Disease in India on SAIA’s blog: https://saia-gi.org/tanyas-pregnancy-journey-living-with-crohns-disease-in-india/ I put off writing this blog for the longest time… I did not know how to write it. In...
Tanya’s Pregnancy Journey Living with Crohn’s Disease in India
My name is Tanya, and I live in Chennai, India. I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease in 1999, a time when little was known about IBD in India. This means that I have segments of intestinal narrowing and scarring throughout my small intestine known as strictures…
How to Own Your Crohn’s & Ostomy While Traveling to India
As IBD warriors, it’s always nerve-wracking to travel with our conditions and/or an ostomy. For me, it’s been 7 years of me traveling all over the U.S. and Europe for patient advocacy work. And even though I’ve spoken many times virtually for events in India and...
Rohit’s Reflections on DDW 2024: Understanding the Complex Interactions in Genetics, the Gut Microbiome, and the Environment in the Development of IBD
Reviewed by: Lea Ann Chen, MD At Digestive Disease Week (DDW) in Washington, D.C., I had the privilege of being involved as co-author on an abstract and presentation given by Dr. Lea Ann Chen, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, titled Unaffected Relatives...
Highlights from ACG 2024: SAIA’s IBDesis’ Patient Experience
Our patient advocate team, SAIA’s IBDesis, were honoured to participate in the American College of Gastroenterology’s (ACG) Annual Scientific Meeting in Philadelphia, PA, USA, between October 25th to October 30th, 2024. As patient advocates, we are grateful for the...
Nour’s Reflections on DDW 2024: Intestinal Ultrasound as a Non-Invasive Tool for IBD Monitoring
In the poster session at DDW 2024, I learned about a new fascinating method that can help providers and patients predict relapse from the poster titled "Intestinal Ultrasound is Predictive of Disease Relapse in Asymptomatic Inflammatory Bowel Disease Patients." The...
Patient Perspectives on DDW 2024: Basmah Recaps on GI Cancers in African Populations
As part of the 2024 Digestive Disease Week Conference (DDW), I had the honor of attending a session led by the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE) and the Pan African Organization for Health, Education, and Research (POHER) on the incidence and...
