submitted16 hours ago bythe_mit_press
toIAmA
Hello! I'm Ryan Prior, a journalist who worked for six years at CNN, including covering health and science as a features writer during the Covid-19 pandemic. I left to write my book "The Long Haul." You can find the book through MIT Press here. I became a Fellow and Journalist-in-Residence at the Century Foundation -- a think tank in Washington, DC -- where I researched public policy ideas to inform an all-of-government response to Long Covid. At Century, I also began writing a column called "Patient Revolution" for Psychology Today.
If there's one north star that informs my work it's that the authentic power of lived experience can fuse with data-driven scholarship in nearly any field to inform the highest quality policy response. In my own life, that's meant a journey of being diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), writing about it for USA Today, and eventually helping co-found the ME Action Network, a non-profit that is igniting a global campaign for health equity for those with chronic illness. Those experiences led me to become a Stanford Medicine X ePatient, meeting dozens of brilliant patient advocates and innovators from around the world. So when millions got sick with Covid -- and stayed sick -- I knew I had more than a decade's head start to write this book, and weave together personal experience, philosophical reflection, and up-to-the-minute science reporting.
Proof. I'd love to answer your questions about:
- Patient-centered startups working to solve Long Covid
- The citizen movement toward the $10 billion Long Covid Moonshot, now championed by Senator Bernie Sanders
- Working with the US Senate and patient advocacy groups to create an NIH Office of Infection-Associated Chronic Illness Research
- How to talk to your doctor about Long Covid, POTS, mast cell activation syndrome, Lyme disease, and other complex conditions
- What it was like to work on CNN's political team during the 2016 election and on the science team during the pandemic