We’re really excited to announce that Visible is launching its own podcast.

Since we started Visible two years ago, we’ve had the privilege of meeting and collaborating with some of the leading researchers in complex chronic illness.

The conversations have been enlightening, motivating, and given us a huge amount of optimism for people living with these conditions, including ourselves.

Now, we want to share these conversations with you directly, and we believe that a podcast is the best way to do it.

Here’s more about the new ‘Make Visible’ podcast:

Breaking down the science

The Visible podcast will be focused on uncovering the latest findings in complex chronic illness, including ME/CFS, Long Covid, EDS, POTS, fibromyalgia, and more.

These conditions all overlap, and we believe that breakthroughs in one condition will likely have a meaningful impact on the rest.

We’ll be digging into the latest research papers, clinical trials and management strategies and bring you interviews with the people behind them. Bringing them to you in an easy to digest way, that can benefit patients, clinicians and researchers alike.

A patient-powered podcast

The Visible podcast will be hosted by Emily Kate Stephens, a journalist who has lived with Long Covid since March 2020.  Having the condition has caused her to pivot from producing breaking news for international broadcasters, to meticulously digging through the research into Long Covid and related conditions.

Emily previously hosted The Long Covid Sessions podcast, and we’re excited to bring her experience, optimism and deep understanding of Long Covid, to complex illnesses more broadly.

Our first episode with the PLRC co-founders

Our first episode features Lisa McCorkell and Hannah Davis from the Patient-led Research Collaborative (PLRC).

Since their inception they have published numerous papers and articles including a complete review of the Long Covid findings in January 2023 in Nature, an article on designing clinical trials in Life Sciences and on the impacts on female reproductive health in Frontiers.  They have worked with the CDC, the NIH, the WHO, and collaborated with Yale, Imperial, UCL and Yale. They’ve also partnered with Visible with an in-app study with Visible on the impact of reinfections.

We discuss their organisation’s achievements - the progress and impact of patient-led advocacy and research in Long Covid and related conditions.

Long Covid Research Moonshot Act of 2024, which aims for $1 billion annual funding for research and treatment for the next 10 years, is a bill that has now been proposed to the U.S. government by Senator Bernie Sanders. “The legislation that we have introduced finally recognizes that long Covid is a public health emergency and provides an historic investment into research, development, and education,” Sanders said.

PLRC have been instrumental in the introduction of this legislation within the U.S. and, as they continue to try and change patient outcomes for the better, we discuss their international collaborations and what is still needed: better-informed public policy and medical education.

You can listen to our first episode on any platform here.

What next?

We’ll be publishing new episodes every two weeks, and keeping up with the latest research, but if there’s a topic, paper or researcher that you’re excited by, and think we should discuss or interview. You can get in touch with us directly at podcast@makevisible.com.

We’re always looking for ways to bring more visibility to these conditions, and the science behind them.

Onwards!

Harry

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