Valeria Giordano
Secretary
LWA – Lipedema World Alliance
Valeria Giordano, founder and president of LIO Lipedema Italia since 2018. Patient advocate for lipedema, endometriosis, ovarian cancer, she is a professional translator, specialised in English for special purposes (area of expertise: medical and audiovisual translation) and a foreign language lecturer and teacher with an ongoing PhD in language and translation (currently frozen since 2014 for health reasons). In 2023 she completed her II level Master Course in Patient Advocacy Management at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery and Economics at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Rome in collaboration with ALTEMS (Graduate School of Economics and Management of Healthcare Organizations), EngageMinds Hub – Consumer & Health Engagement Research Centre, ASAG (Graduate School of Psychology) and the “Agostino Gemelli” University Polyclinic Foundation. She is passionate about raising awareness of lipedema, giving voice to patients and their needs and empowering people with lipedema to feel there’s nothing wrong with them and they’re worth enough to be heard and receive proper care. She is one of the constituents of Lipedema World Alliance as a great opportunity to working together with healthcare professionals and researchers to promote evidence-based medicine and to bring patients’ values to their attention.
Lio Lipedema Italia
Lio Lipedema Italia – Associazione Italiana Lipedema is a non-profit association supporting lipedema patients managing their disease and improve their quality of life, to advocate for better knowledge of lipedema and to have it recognized by the Italian Health System. LIO is also a community in which lipedema sufferers cooperate among themselves and with their families, supporters and healthcare professionals to make the disease known and recognised. We fight together for the protection of the rights of invisible patients who experience physical, psychological, economic, social and family disadvantage. LIO organises and promotes activities aimed at guaranteeing people with lipedema the right to health, the recognition of the Essential Levels of Care and the Assisted Diagnostic and Therapeutic Pathways. We fight to disseminate relevant information validated by the world scientific community. The association is made up entirely of volunteers, lipedema sufferers or caregivers, who experience the multiple discomforts of the disease at first hand. LIO organized the first Italian lipedema conference in 2019, organised an international online consensus webinar on lipedema in 2020, financed a research project about histopathology in lipedema in 2021 and promotes cooperation and dialogue between lipedema associations and healthcare professionals worldwide, in order to include patients in multidisciplinary care pathways and disseminating best practice in treatment. #WorkingTogetherWeCanMakeaChangeInLipedema