Gail Attara, President and CEO, Gastrointestinal Society (GI Society) www.badgut.org | www.mauxdeventre.org With offices in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, the GI Society supports Canadians with a full range of resources in the sorely neglected gastrointestinal health area. Gail Attara began in 1996 as Executive Director of the organization’s sister charity, the Canadian Society of Intestinal Research (CSIR). She led the organization from a small BC charity into a national presence, accounting for the largest growth period since inception in 1976, before co-founding the GI Society in 2008 and now serving as its president and chief executive officer.

Gail’s motto, “The patient comes first,” directs her leadership of the GI Society, as she advocates on behalf of patients to promote patient-focused health care and for a wider public awareness of digestive illnesses that affect as many as 20 million Canadians.

Government, non-profit, media, medical, and corporate stakeholders in GI health regularly seek out Gail for consultations and speaking engagements from coast to coast, where she is known for captivating listeners with her straightforward and engaging style.

Gail has a sound background in public relations and fundraising, and she is also a published freelance author and artist. She is an active community volunteer in Canada and overseas, [...] continue the story

Holly Bridges Three years ago, I was diagnosed with uterine fibroids (non-cancerous tumours facing 1 in 4 women and are the leading cause of hysterectomy in Canada) and told that hysterectomy was my only option.

Today, I am pain-free and period-free, with all my reproductive organs intact, thanks to a gynecologist I found through

my own research, who performed two of the most high tech, state-of-the-art procedures available in the world today – a hysteroscopic myomectomy and hysteroscopic endometrial ablation.  Women should not have to rely on their own detective skills to get the best possible outcomes for the medical conditions that threaten their well-being.

So what?

Every year in North America, some 700,000 women (650,000 American and 50,000 Canadian) undergo hysterectomy and of those, 60 and 80 per cent of those hysterectomies are medically unnecessary, performed for benign conditions such as uterine fibroids, cysts, polyps, adenomyosis and the most crippling of all benign conditions, endometriosis.

The reason I am so passionate about helping women become more aware of minimally invasive medical and surgical options is they present outcomes for women that are:

Less painful Less risky Less invasive Less expensive

I wrote The UnHysterectomy and started my online community as a resource for women to learn, connect and share about their own [...] continue the story

My Journey: Lee Durdon, President and Founder, Sjogren’s Society of Canada

Sjogren’s Syndrome is the second most prevalent autoimmune disorder that few have heard of. Sjogren’s takes an average of 5–9 years to be diagnosed. Sufferers may not look sick on the outside adding to the delay in diagnosis. Affects 430,000 Canadians; 3 x more than Multiple Sclerosis and Lupus; and 9 out of 10 are women, but men and children also suffer.

After a long road and finally being diagnosed with Sjogren’s Syndrome several years ago, I was fortunate to find excellent doctors and excellent care, but it still wasn’t enough. As many of us living with Sjogren’s are all too well aware of, just as we seem to get one symptom under control, another equally annoying, disruptive, painful symptom appears or an unwanted one returns again. The unpredictability of Sjogren’s is particularly difficult to live with. So goes the journey.

I felt I owed it to my husband and family but more importantly, I owed it to myself to find a way to try to live a better life or even have a life with Sjogren’s. I needed to find support from other people with the same disease that could understand [...] continue the story

Guida Quaglia Clozza Guida Quaglia Clozza (B.PHE; B.ED) is a retired secondary school teacher with 31 years of experience in Physical and Health Education and has a specialist in Special Education. Her passion for teaching and advocating for the rights and the needs of exceptional students have led her over the years to become a voice of support for fairness, in both the educational and medical communities.

Guida has always been a strong advocate for special needs children and promoting inclusion in school and in the community. She has sat on parent school councils, presented workshops on navigating the school system, and has been involved in many school and community special education programs and parent workshops

(Erinoak Kids Treatment Center, Hospital for Sick Kids, Geneva Center for Autism, Community Living in Peel region, Dufferin Peel Catholic School Board Special Education Advisory Committee). In 2009, Guida was recognized for ‘her advocacy and efforts on behalf of special needs students’ by the Ontario Association for Developmental Education as the recipient of the Fred Soplet Humanitarian Award.

Guida has actively been involved in Epilepsy awareness as an Epilepsy ambassador for 20 years working through Epilepsy Toronto, where she received the H.O.P.E Award (Helping Out People with Epilepsy) [...] continue the story