PicnicHealth is proud to partner with WeAreILL to empower women of color living with MS to get better access to their medical records and to contribute to research on their terms. Together we are developing resources that are meaningful to the community and might change the experiences and health of women of color living with MS.
Our goal is to empower the multiple sclerosis community with ownership of their full medical histories, including neurology records and MRIs. FlywheelMS is PicnicHealth’s novel patient-centered study that empowers the entire community of MS patients to volunteer at the click of a button. PicnicHealth does the legwork to collect the medical records of thousands of MS patients without extra trials, treatments, or drugs.
PicnicHealth organizes and anonymizes elements from medical records like infusion dates, narrative text, and outcomes. When PicnicHealth combines these elements in thousands of MS patients’ records, stories and patterns emerge to help researchers answer key scientific questions.
WeAreILL was founded originally as a social media campaign called #WeAreILLmatic to support Black women living with MS. With unfair stigma attached to MS, especially in minority communities, WeAreILL was created to give those individuals the power to not live in shame. As a result of the campaign, #WeAreILLmatic created a network of more than a thousand women of color from around the world fighting the disease and transformed into the pending nonprofit organization WeAreILL.
WeAreILL now supports women of color living with MS through a social media network, political and social advocacy, educational programming, and support groups. They call attention to and unite Black women battling MS and inspires those women to live healthier and fuller lives. WeAreILL also serves as a thought-leader in the MS, invisible illness, and wellness space. By changing the narrative of MS and improving the health outcomes of Black women, WeAreILL not only gives the forgotten MS warriors a space to share their stories, but the organization hopes to help better fight the disease.
Learn more and sign up for PicnicHealth at Flywheel.MS. FlywheelMS is open to anyone, of any gender or ethnicity, diagnosed with MS and living in the US.
