Regina Holliday is an activist, artist, speaker and author in Grantsville, Maryland. You might see her at a health conference painting the content she hears from the patient view. She is part the movement known as participatory medicine. She and others in this movement believe that the patient is a partner with their provider and both should work together as a team. Regina, like her friend Dave deBronkart, is also an e-patient. She utilizes the tools of technology and social media to better understand the patient condition and the landscape of medicine.
Regina is a mother and a widow; she speaks about the benefits of HIT and timely data access for patients due to her family loss. In 2009, she painted a series of murals depicting the need for clarity and transparency in medical records. This advocacy mission was inspired by her late husband Frederick Allen Holliday II and his struggle to get appropriate care during 11 weeks of continuous hospitalization at 5 facilities. Her paintings became part of the national debate on health care reform and helped guide public policy.
She also began an advocacy movement called "The Walking Gallery." The Gallery consists of medical providers and advocates who wear patient story paintings on the backs of business suits. Paint and patients, pills and policy all come together within The Walking Gallery of Healthcare. This "walking wall" of 200 individuals who wear personal patient narrative paintings on their backs is changing minds and opening hearts. They are attending medical conferences where often there isn't a patient speaker on the dais or in the audience. They are providing a patient voice, and by doing so, are changing the conversation.
Regina has delivered 76 speeches in the last two years as a patient speaker focusing on range of issues such as patient data access, social media in medicine, end of life care and the power of the visual image. She has spoken before Kaiser Permanente, Stanford Medicine X, The White House Summit on Blue Button, Leap Frog Group, AHDI, HIMSS, AHIMA, AHRQ, HHS, Microsoft and Cerner. She travels the nation as a patient speaker and encourages others to speak as well. She worked with TMIT (Texas Medical Institute of Technology) to create a resource called SpeakerLink.org to help venues find passionate patient speakers.
She is honored to speak and paint and hopes many of you will get to see her book, "The Walking Wall: 73 Cents to the Walking Gallery."
