This week on Seizing Life ® we look at the challenges faced by minority groups in general and the Hispanic community in particular in accessing quality epilepsy care and learn about a program aimed at addressing these issues. Dr. Refugio Sepulveda, Assistant Professor of Research at the University of Arizona, discusses the known disparities in epilepsy care faced by the Hispanic community and outlines an approach called Mindset that is about to be tested within the community with the goal of empowering patients and providers to improve care and management of epilepsy.

This week on Seizing Life® we look at medical cannabis as a treatment option for epilepsy from the perspective of a mother, an advocate, and an educator with a master’s degree in medical cannabis and therapeutics – and in this case, they are all the same person. Sarah O’Hanlon’s journey to find relief for her son Owen’s daily seizures first led her to Colorado, then to advocacy in her home state of Virginia, and finally to a recently created master’s program in medical cannabis at the University of Maryland.

This week on Seizing Life® we talk seizure alert dogs with Jessa Kenworthy, Training Director at 4 Paws for Ability, a breeding, training, and placement organization for service dogs.

This week on Seizing Life® epilepsy advocate and mother Kate Neale Cooper shares her daughter Virginia’s 16-year epilepsy journey. She explains how a new diagnostic tool enabled doctors to localize Virginia’s seizures, and ultimately perform successful epilepsy surgery.

Filmmaker Miles Levin discusses growing-up with epilepsy and turning his experiences into the award-winning short film “Under the Lights”. Miles talks about his initial diagnosis at age 4 and details his long journey with epilepsy, focusing on the social impact that he experienced throughout childhood and adolescence.

This week on Seizing Life epilepsy researcher Dr. Nicholas Varvel discusses the connection between acquired epilepsy and inflammation in the brain. Dr. Varvel explains how and why some people may develop epilepsy following a brain injury, infection, or illness, and shares how discoveries made through his research could lead to new treatments for preventing the onset of seizures.

This week on Seizing Life ®, Dr. Doug Nordli, Chief of Pediatric Neurology at UChicago Medicine, provides a guide to help parents navigate diagnosing epilepsy in their children and understand the treatment journey.

This week on Seizing Life we present short videos about three key areas of epilepsy research on which we focus: Post-Traumatic Epilepsy (PTE), Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP), and Refractory (or Drug-Resistant) epilepsy.

This week on Seizing Life ®, Yssa DeWoody of Ring14 USA and the Rare Epilepsy Network (REN) joins us to provide a primer on rare epilepsies. Yssa explains what rare epilepsies are and how they are diagnosed, potential treatments, and the particular challenges for those impacted.