Community Organization Perspectives on Improving Clinical Trial Initiatives

Tina Aswani-Omprakash is a Crohn’s patient and award-winning patient leader and health advocate based out of New York City. She has had Crohn’s Disease for 16 years and has had numerous surgeries. Ms Aswani-Omprakash maintains a blog and advocacy platform called Own Your Crohn’s (http://ownyourcrohns.com) and recently co-founded IBDesis, a community for South Asians living with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). She has now merged IBDesis into a patient-clinician non-profit initiative called South Asian IBD Alliance (SAIA). Her overarching aim is to normalize the rhetoric around chronic illnesses and disabilities in order to help diverse groups of patients own their ailments to live fuller, happier lives.Via her writing, lobbying, social media advocacy and speaking engagements, she spearheads public health causes, including those proposing research for and creating awareness for IBD, life-saving ostomy surgery, gastroparesis, fistulizing disease and initiatives supporting health equity for women and racial, ethnic & sexual minorities.Ms Aswani-Omprakash is pursuing her Master’s degree in Public Health at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine. Additionally, she has spoken at many premier GI conferences worldwide and has co-authored four research papers and two guidebooks on IBD care. Ms Aswani-Omprakash does freelance work as a patient advisor for non-profits as well as ostomy manufacturers, in addition to pharmaceutical and digital health companies. Her aim is to help companies recognize disparities and unmet needs in minority health populations.The Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation recognized Ms Aswani-Omprakash in 2021 for her phenomenal leadership and powerful impact on the IBD community with the Above & Beyond Volunteer Award. Ms Aswani-Omprakash’s blog was also recognized as a 2020 Best Blog by Healthline and she was awarded the 2019 Healio Gastroenterology Disruptive Innovator Award by the American College of Gastroenterology for moving the needle on GI care for patients.

Ash Rishi is founder and CEO of COUCH Health, a global creative health engagement agency that serves to make health research inclusive. Its focus covers a range of solutions, including patient insights and engagement through to recruitment and retention within health research. Mr Rishi has over 15 years of experience in the industry, navigating the diverse needs of big pharma through to smaller biotech companies. With experience that covers the full medicine lifecycle, from pre-clinical to lifecycle management, his passions lay in working to make research more inclusive and has founded Demand Diversity a non-profit in 2023.