Marcella Oggiano
LWA – Lipedema World Alliance
Marcella Oggiano is an Italian lipedema sufferer living abroad for 29 years. She has been a Buyer and Senior Product Manager for 17 years in the wine industry and she has volunteered in India and for the United Nations, skills that she put at the service of LIO Lipedema Italia in which she is the vicepresident since 2021. In LIO she focuses on international projects and collaborations and is involved in corporate fundraising activities. Marcella speaks four languages and is graduated in Economics and Finance in Germany, with a background training as an elementary school teacher, political science and Italian and Spanish linguistics. She is pragmatic, tenacious and curious like a child, but she loses her temper when she sees injustice.
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