Tina Aswani Omprakash

Tina Aswani-Omprakash is a multi award-winning Crohn’s advocate and patient leader based out of New York City. Tina maintains a blog and advocacy platform called Own Your Crohn’s (https://ownyourcrohns.com) and co-founded South Asian IBD Alliance (SAIA) (https://www.southasianibd.org) to form a patient-clinician led non-profit initiative in order to minimize disparities and improve education in the growing South Asian IBD population.

Tina’s 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, fistulizing disease and initiatives supporting health equity for women and racial & ethnic minorities.

Tina is pursuing her Master’s degree in Public Health at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine and will be graduating in 2023. Additionally, she has spoken at many premier GI conferences worldwide and has co-authored several research papers in prominent journals (JAMA, Gastroenterology, Inflammatory Bowel Diseases), a guidebook on IBD care for parents of pediatric patients for National Alliance for Caregiving and a series of websites on Crohn’s-related ostomy surgery for United Ostomy Associations of America. Tina does consulting work as a patient advisor for non-profits, clinical research organizations as well as ostomy manufacturers, in addition to pharmaceutical and digital health companies. Her aim is to help design more patient-friendly clinical trials and to ensure recognition of disparities and unmet needs in communities of color.

Tina has been featured in The New York Times, on the cover of American College of Gastroenterology Magazine and in Gastroenterology & Endoscopy News as well as Health Magazine for her trailblazing advocacy work. The American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) awarded Tina the Best Patient Advocacy Award in 2022 and the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation recognized Tina in 2021 for her phenomenal leadership and powerful impact on the IBD community with the Above & Beyond Volunteer Award. Tina’s blog was also recognized as one of the Best Health Blogs in 2020 by Healthline and she was awarded the 2019 Healio Gastroenterology Disruptive Innovator Award by ACG for moving the needle on GI care for patients.