Shows / Advocacy at Work
Advocacy at Work
Every advocate has a moment — the diagnosis, the loss, the phone call that rewired everything. Advocacy at Work explores the pivotal stories of patients, caregivers, and changemakers who turned their hardest moments into their greatest purpose. Hosted by cancer survivor and patient advocate Tim McDonald. One moment. One pivot. One purpose.
www.advocacyatwork.com
Episodes
Advocacy at WorkWhat Patients See, What Pharmacists See, and Why Both Matter
What happens when patients and healthcare professionals are experiencing the same problem, but seeing very different parts of it? In my conversation with…
Advocacy at WorkThe Person Behind the Patient Advocate
Daniel G. Garza was already thinking about making a video on the drive home from his anal cancer diagnosis. He had spent years speaking publicly about living…
Advocacy at WorkWhen Questions Become Advocacy
There are moments when you realize that caring about someone is not the same as knowing how to help them. For Andrea Katz, that moment came in 2013, when her…
Advocacy at WorkThe Finance Guy Who Became the Bridge Between Patients and Nuclear Medicine
Jud Kimmel spent most of his career in public policy and finance. He wasn’t a scientist. He wasn’t a doctor. He wasn’t someone with a natural pathway into…
Advocacy at WorkThe AI Expert Who Became His Own Case Study
John Duffield was living a completely normal life. He was working in AI. Fortune 500 companies. Helping healthcare organizations rethink how they work. Staying…
Advocacy at WorkThe Outlier: How a Pancreatic Cancer Survivor Is Turning His Survival Into Science
The first symptom was acidity in his stomach. Yann Bizien was living a standard life in Paris in 2017. Software industry. Account manager. Selling solutions to…
Advocacy at WorkThe Discipline That Almost Killed Him
A retired special forces colonel. A stage 3C colon cancer diagnosis. And how the same discipline that made him a warrior almost took him down There’s a…
Advocacy at WorkFour Years, One Protocol
Ryan Bowman was born in 1991 with five congenital heart defects. One in 10 million. He had four open heart surgeries before his fifth birthday. The last one…
Advocacy at WorkThe Rare Cancer Nobody Knows About
From dismissed period cramps to appendix cancer discovery: Why rare disease awareness months matter—and how one advocate is making sure no one else misses the…
Advocacy at WorkThe Food Whisperer
I’ll be honest. When our mutual friend Vincent connected me with Adrienne Falcone Godsell, I wasn’t sure exactly where the conversation was going to go. I knew…
Advocacy at WorkFrom Six Months to Ten Years
A suburban mom’s fall on a hiking trail led to a metastatic cancer diagnosis, and an unexpected path through clinical trials, liver transplant, and discovering…
Advocacy at WorkThe Only Young Person Here
Twenty-four years ago, Vanessa Ghigliotty was 28 years old and had just graduated college. She was a young mom. She was planning to study for her LSATs. She…
Advocacy at WorkHe Ignored Symptoms for 3 Years.
Andy Goodspeed ignored his symptoms for nearly three years — heartburn, fatigue, back pain he chalked up to age and restaurant work. By the time doctors found…
Advocacy at WorkThe Revolution Will Be Organized
From pediatric cancer survivor to patient rights activist: Why one man believes the next great advocacy movement isn't about cure rates, it's about preventing…
Advocacy at WorkThe Unexpected Activist: How a Living Kidney Donor Became a Voice for Organ Donation
When Debbie Lundberg was getting her driver’s license, she did something that surprised her parents: she wanted to sign up as an organ donor. She was young…
Advocacy at WorkBeing a Walking Permission Slip: How Dr. Carlos Garcia Turned Suffering Into Service
There’s a statistic Dr. Carlos Garcia carries with him: from the time a man experiences his first mental health symptom to the time he actually seeks help, on…
Advocacy at WorkFrom Left for Dead to Living Proof:
There’s a moment in most survivor stories where everything pivots, where the person standing on the other side of a catastrophe decides what that catastrophe…
Advocacy at WorkFinding Your Lane
There’s a pattern I keep noticing with the advocates I interview. Almost none of them set out to become one. Scott K. Johnson is a perfect example. He’s lived…
Advocacy at WorkWhen Your Child's Diagnosis Becomes Your Calling
How one mother's determination to help her son led to saving lives across San Diego—and why small, local victories matter as much as Capitol Hill battles…
Advocacy at WorkFrom Butt Pics to Public Health
When David Russo discovered he had precancerous polyps after fighting for a colonoscopy, he uncovered a family secret: colorectal cancer had silently killed…
Advocacy at WorkBeyond "Just a Rash"
The Eczema That Nobody Takes Seriously Close to 31 million Americans have eczema. That’s roughly 10% of the population. Yet when most people think of eczema…
Advocacy at WorkSpeaking About the Unspeakable
The Barriers Nobody Talks About When most people think of colorectal cancer advocacy, they might picture statistics, awareness campaigns, or calls to get…
Advocacy at WorkThe Power of Showing Up
A Loss That Sparked Purpose In 2004, Casie Shimanski’s younger sister Kellie died at just 18 years old. Kellie wasn’t diagnosed with cancer. But the…
Advocacy at WorkFrom Isolation to Impact
A Young Woman With No Warning Signs Allison Rosen was 32 years old, in the best shape of her life, when she noticed something wrong. She had Crohn’s disease…
Advocacy at WorkBuilding Careers and Movements
The Accidental Advocate (Before He Got Sick) Michael Holtz’s journey into cancer advocacy didn’t start with a cancer diagnosis. It started with a hospital PR…
Advocacy at WorkFrom Stage Four to a Movement
The Isolation That Nearly Killed Him Trevor Maxwell was 41 years old, living what he thought was a normal middle-class life with two daughters, when he was…
Advocacy at WorkPreventing Cancer Before It Happens
A Sister’s Legacy Becomes a National Movement In 2005, a woman named Kristen Linquist lost her sister Suzie to young-onset colorectal cancer. Suzie had been…
Advocacy at WorkFinding Your Lane
The Bathroom Floor Moment That Started It All JJ Singleton was 27 years old when he was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in September 2015. For years, he…
Advocacy at WorkThe Long Game of Advocacy
There’s a common misconception about advocacy: that it’s something you do once and expect immediate results. But the reality is far more nuanced—and far more…
Advocacy at WorkFrom Surviving to Serving
Liz Healy's story is one of resilience, but more importantly, it's a story about choosing service when you've been handed circumstances that would justify…
Advocacy at WorkFrom Financial Assistance to Political Action
When Amy Niles joined the PAN Foundation in 2014, the organization was a financial lifeline—providing grants to help patients afford medications. But she saw…