Having your body at the center of ongoing medical scrutiny is not the ideal situation in which to develop an individual and autonomous body image.
Read more about Body Image & IBD on LOOP
A resource created by members of Patient Advisory Council of ImproveCareNow. The
purpose of this toolkit is to share personal experiences of body image issues from teens
and young adults living with IBD. This toolkit includes stories from PAC members, in
which they talk about the ways in which IBD treatments/medication, surgeries, and
comments from others have impacted how they perceive their own body.
The Health Literacy Toolkit is the latest IBD resource from the Patient Advisory Council. It is designed to help empower patients to understand their IBD and get involved with managing their own healthcare. The toolkit includes information on IBD basics, common tests, treatments, and key terminology. It was written for patients, by patients, with input from the ICN Clinical Committee.
Download the Health Literacy Toolkit
ImPACt is a podcast launched by the Patient Advisory Council (PAC) of ImproveCareNow in 2021, where PAC members talk openly about Inflammatory Bowel Disease with a goal of increasing awareness, education & inclusivity while connecting with listeners, each other, and podcast guests. Learn more about the imPACt Podcast
A few episodes to get you started:
- IBS in IBD with Dr. Carlo Di Lorenzo
- Patient Centered Care with Dr. Michel & Dr. Patel
- Dr. Sunseri & Dr. Crawford talk EEN with the PAC
- IBD, Meds, Biologics, Oh My!
The Patient Advisory Council (PAC) has created a new web resource focusing on Lifestyle and IBD.
With this new web resource, the PAC hopes to:
💚 inspire healthcare teams to explore and embrace the importance of treating the whole patient, by considering and having conversations about the varied implications of IBD on patient lifestyle
💙 provide patients, family, caregivers, and friends with a resource they can use to increase their understanding of the many ways IBD touches the lives of those who live with it
💚 connect with those who feel lonely and unseen, by sharing stories and experiences that resonate and provide value and validation
💙 delve into social justice topics, such as increasing resource accessibility for patients in under-resourced communities, driving conversation and change in ImproveCareNow and the larger healthcare system.
Check out the Lifestyle and IBD Web resource!
David Suskind, MD is an IBD clinician and researcher, as well as physician leader of ImproveCareNow at Seattle Children's Hospital. He helped to create the Professor NiMBAL comic which presents important information about Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis in a way that is easy to digest and feels less scary.
Download the Professor NiMBAL comic in a language of your choice.
In 2023, the educational website Breaking Biosimilar Barriers launched thanks to a partnership between Nationwide Children's Hospital, The Ohio State University College of Medicine and ImproveCareNow. This website aims to educate providers and patients on the safety and efficacy of biosimilars by providing educational materials on a number of topics, including:
- Understanding Biosimilars
- Safety, Efficacy & Cost Savings
- Nocebo Effect
- Strategies to Increase Biosimilar Utilization
- Available IBD Biosimilars & the Biosimilar Pipeline
David Wohl (parent of a child with Crohn's disease) and Mike Kappelman (pediatric gastroenterologist at UNC Children's), in collaboration with the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation, ImproveCareNow, and NASPGHAN, have developed a slide set and pre-recorded webinar to help patients & families understand more about the purpose and process of clinical research, including clinical trials. The aim is to provide education to patients and families, and increase awareness about clinical research so that when they are approached and asked to participate in a clinical research project they can have an idea of what may be involved. Care teams can choose to incorporate the slides or webinar recording into local educational programs (i.e. an IBD education day), or share the resources with patients and families directly when discussing clinical trials. We hope these Clinical Research 101 resources are useful to patients, families, and IBD care teams.
Clinical Research 101: Patients and Clinicians Gearing up to Discover Together – View Presentation
Understanding the Importance of Pediatric Clinical Trials - Parent Guide
Nicole Learns about Clinical Trials – Patient Guide
⭐ LOOP is the official blog of ImproveCareNow. It's a place where patients, parents, clinicians, researchers, improvers and friends share their #myICN stories. We have organized these posts in various categories, and you can use this LOOP Directory to read more about topics that interest you!
⭐ Members of the Patient Advisory Council (PAC) have shared their stories and together with ImproveCareNow the PAC has created resources to help others talk about their experience with IBD.
The IBD Team at Nationwide Children's Hospital created a series of educational videos, narrated by real kids with IBD, that you can watch anytime you like.
- What is Inflammatory Bowel Disease or IBD?
- Growth and Nutrition with IBD
- Managing Life with IBD
- IBD: What Tests You Might Expect
- IBD: Transitioning from Pediatric to Adult GI Care
Read more on LOOP!
Nationwide Children’s video series shares accurate, understandable, patient-friendly info about IBD
Resources on this page were recommended by the ImproveCareNow Clinical Committee