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Migraine Matters: Women Navigating Wellness Across the Lifespan
August 4, 2021 @ 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm EDT
SWHR hosted a webinar on August 4, 2021 featuring a panel of women who spoke to diverse patient experiences with migraine across the lifespan, from young adult and student life through midlife and post-reproductive years. During the webinar, panelists shared insights from their personal journeys and reviewed strategies across key areas of physical, emotional, environmental, and social wellness.
Migraine is a chronic disease in which a person has attacks of moderate to severe head pain and symptoms, which can include nausea and extreme sensitivity to light, sounds and smells. Migraines can last 4 to 72 hours if untreated.
Three out of four people living with migraine are women, and women are more likely to experience longer and more intense migraine attacks, as well as higher levels of disability.
About 17% of women experience episodic migraine and 1.3% of women have chronic migraine, in which they experience 15 or more headache days per month for at least 3 months in a row. One in 13 women have menstrually-related migraine attacks. While symptoms are generally the same, the main distinction between migraine types is the frequency, timing, and duration of attacks, and an individual’s type of migraine may change over their lifetime.
Managing migraine disease often requires a personalized approach that combines medical treatments and wellness strategies to help each individual achieve a full and functional life. The Society for Women’s Health Research has created patient toolkits and fact sheets to increase migraine awareness and assist individuals living with migraine toward better health and support.
PANELISTS
Eliana Donner-Klein
Eliana Donner-Klein
Eliana Donner Klein has been a patient advocate since 2015, writing to raise awareness about living with chronic migraine an other invisible illnesses. Her work and advocacy has been featured in Migraine.com, The Mighty, and Teen Vogue in addition to her blog Chronic Migraine Ellie She has consulted for migraine organizations including the Coalition for Headache and Migraine Patients (CHAMP), pharmaceutical company patient summits, and has written several white papers on the stigma surrounding migraine and the history of migraine advocacy.
Donner Klein currently works as a Senior Associate for Marketing and Business Development at Audacious Inquiry, a national industry-shaping health IT company that developed the single most impactful platform for aligning better care across the healthcare continuum. She previously worked as an Associate at Sirona Strategies where she focused on a variety of health policy issues including Medicare and Medicaid, value-based care, health information technology and interoperability, telehealth, and the social determinants of health. In addition to her policy and regulatory work, she worked as the communications manager to redesign and run Sirona’s and its coalition websites, strategic communications campaigns, and thought leadership through events and newsletters.
Donner-Klein graduated from Wesleyan University with a BA in History and the Science in Society Program in 2019, with a focus in the history of science, technology and medicine. She wrote her senior thesis on the development of pain management as a medical specialty and how physician advocacy organizations influenced state and federal pain policies in the decades leading up to the opioid crisis.
Jaime Sanders
Jaime Sanders
Jaime Sanders is the author of the award-winning blog The Migraine Diva. She is an affiliate partner with the Coalition For Headache And Migraine Patients, with whom she is working to create an Issue Brief on Disparities in Headache and a part of the leadership of the Disparities in Headache Advisory Council (DiHAC).
Ms. Sanders is a stakeholder with the Headache and Migraine Policy Forum, works with the Society for Women’s Health Research Migraine Network, and sits on the Patient Leadership Council with the National Headache Foundation. She has lived with migraine since the age of two and has been chronic and intractable for the last fifteen years. Through her advocacy work and blog, Ms. Sanders’ mission is to make a very invisible disease visible to the rest of the world and validate the real pain of millions.
You may reach her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.
Shirley Kessel
Shirley Kessel
Shirley’s work experience in medical sales, teaching, non-profit volunteering, as well as thirty-five years in the medical administrative field, have enabled her to reach a pinnacle as a professional migraine advocate. During this time of evolutionary change in the headache space, she is leading Miles for Migraine, from a young non-profit, to the largest live, patient-participatory event host organization in the country. Her passion to finding a cure is through creating opportunities for people to advocate, learn, and be part of a thriving community, so they can teach their friends, family and employers how to change the message about migraine disease. Her role as a tribe creator and disease communication expert has assisted her to become one of the most vocal advocates in the migraine community.
Shirley became chronic at age 25, forcing her to leave behind an MBA program. Two of her 3 daughters inherited migraine.
SPONSORS
