Dr. SheriThe LIVE Today Foundation’s founder, Dr. Sheri Prentiss, MD, MPH, CPS/A, CPE, FACPE, is a proven visionary, author, and highly sought-after physician leader. She is an occupational and environmental medicine physician, public health expert, certified public speaker, breast cancer survivor, and lymphedema survivor. She has founded and managed two successful, health-oriented businesses (S. Phillips Consulting LLC and PrimaDonnaMD Designs) while providing executive leadership (Walgreens, Susan G. Komen, MetLife, Advocate Health Care, Hospira, Centegra Health System), board service (AAPL, The Harvey Brooks Foundation), and teaching (Harper College, University of Illinois, University of Pennsylvania Health System).
Through decades of clinical practice, Dr. Sheri’s philosophy of care developed to incorporate mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and psychosocial/cultural insight as critical elements of transformative medicine. She believes that staying healthy and consuming healthcare should be joyful experiences. One of her professional delights has been educating patients and practitioners on how to maintain consistently positive, personalized, and productive provider/patient interactions. In doing so, she has helped transform how medical practitioners deliver healthcare and how patients experience it. In 2008, Dr. Sheri received a breast cancer diagnosis. Her treatment included a partial mastectomy, a lymph node dissection, 15 rounds of chemotherapy, and 33 rounds of radiation. In 2010, Dr. Sheri lost her dream career as a physician when she was struck with lymphedema. Her boss unceremoniously dismissed her, saying, “A physician who is not clinically capable is of no value to me.” [Read the full story in her book, When Everything Changed: My Journey from Physician to Patient.] Dr. Sheri took her meds, she shared her story in motivational ways, she rallied for the cure as Susan G. Komen’s 3-Day Spokesperson, and she wore compression garments … |
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BUT there was only so much of the uncomfortable, unattractive compression garments that she was going to endure!
In true Dr. Sheri fashion, she took her debilitating disease and created her own designer line of medical grade, post-surgical garments, including compression garments for lymphedema.
Dr. Sheri discovered that her glove and sleeve sets not only effectively treated her pain and swelling, they restored a flash of beauty to her day. They helped to restore her body image confidence and self-esteem, which take a serious blow when your arm suddenly becomes grossly deformed from lymphedema.
While she found enjoyment in wearing her own line of garments, she realized that these specialized sleeve/glove sets—and even the far less lovely traditional sets—were not affordable for low-income/under-resourced women, especially survivors of color. Her perspective as an empathetic, transformative healthcare practitioner and patient/survivor drove her to launch her latest venture in 2017—the LIVE Today Foundation. This 501c3 nonprofit benefits from her medical expertise, corporate experience, organizational excellence, innate energy, and survivor’s passion for life. She now partners with established compression garment manufacturers to provide stylish, sassy and medically sound treatment to the under-resourced populations living with lymphedema.
Dr. Sheri discovered that her glove and sleeve sets not only effectively treated her pain and swelling, they restored a flash of beauty to her day. They helped to restore her body image confidence and self-esteem, which take a serious blow when your arm suddenly becomes grossly deformed from lymphedema.
While she found enjoyment in wearing her own line of garments, she realized that these specialized sleeve/glove sets—and even the far less lovely traditional sets—were not affordable for low-income/under-resourced women, especially survivors of color. Her perspective as an empathetic, transformative healthcare practitioner and patient/survivor drove her to launch her latest venture in 2017—the LIVE Today Foundation. This 501c3 nonprofit benefits from her medical expertise, corporate experience, organizational excellence, innate energy, and survivor’s passion for life. She now partners with established compression garment manufacturers to provide stylish, sassy and medically sound treatment to the under-resourced populations living with lymphedema.
