Tina Aswani-Omprakash

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, has had numerous surgeries, and lives with a permanent ileostomy.

Tina maintains a blog and advocacy platform called Own Your Crohn’s and co-founded IBDesis, a community for South Asians living with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). She recently merged IBDesis into a patient-clinician led 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.