Claiming Your Story: Shanda McManus on Gun Violence, Compounding Grief, Narrative Medicine, and Why Writing Heals

In this episode of the Visible Voices Podcast, I am in conversation with Dr. Shanda McManus — family medicine physician, narrative medicine educator, and author of Brother Epistles (2026 by Split/Lip Press). In 1992, Shanda's brother Monir was killed in a drive-by shooting in North Philadelphia. He was 20 years old. Thirty years later, she began writing him letters — and what emerged is a memoir that is part grief, part social commentary, and entirely healing. We discuss what it means to carry compounding grief, how medical training can become a place to hide from loss, the systems that failed Monir long before that night in 1992, and what narrative medicine offers both patients and clinicians who have no place to take their pain.  Website: https://www.shandamcmanus.com/ ▶ Subscribe on YouTube @resaelewissmd  New Visible Voices episodes on Wednesdays. 🎙️ Search "The Visible Voices Podcast" on Spotify or Apple Podcasts

In this episode of The Visible Voices Podcast, I sit down with Dr. Scott Weiner, emergency physician, associate professor at Harvard Medical School, and founder of system-wide substance use disorder programming.  Dr. Weiner shares the patient cases that set his life's work in motion, including a fatal overdose on Boston Common that changed how he understood both medicine and advocacy.  Scott addresses the troubling gap in opioid education in American schools, the promise of wearable technology for monitoring patients in recovery, and the real reasons overdose deaths are finally starting to decline. Opioid use disorder is not a moral failure — it is a public health crisis. ▶ Subscribe on YouTube @resaelewissmd — new Visible Voices episodes Wednesdays. 🎙️ Search "The Visible Voices Podcast" on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. This episode includes real stories from the emergency department, including a fatal overdose. We share these stories because they matter and because they drive change. Please take care of you. Pause and step away at any time and know that you can always come back to the episode.

In this episode of the Visible Voices Podcast, I sit down with Dr. Rana Awdish — pulmonary and critical care physician at Henry Ford Health and bestselling author of In Shock and her new book After Shock: Learning to Re-inhabit My Body After Illness. Rana takes us from a keynote stage in Houston where she realized she had been telling a cleaned-up version of her own story, through a decade of chronic illness, stroke, autoimmune disease, and pain — and into the embodiment practices, art, yin yoga, and hard-won self-awareness that brought her back to herself. We talk about what medicine gets wrong about sick bodies, how self-sacrifice gets weaponized against clinicians, and why doubt might just be the way forward. Find Rana https://www.ranaawdishmd.com/ ▶ Subscribe on YouTube @resaelewissmd — new Visible Voices episodes on Wednesdays. 🎙️ Search "The Visible Voices Podcast" on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

In this episode of The Visible Voices Podcast, Dr. Columbus Batiste — interventional cardiologist, lifestyle medicine physician, Regional Chief of Cardiology for Southern California Permanente Medical Group, founder of Healthy Heart Nation, and author of Selfish: A Cardiologist's Guide to Healing a Broken Heart — makes the case that prescriptions and procedures alone are not enough. Dr. Batiste draws on the preventable losses of his father and father-in-law to explore why moderation is not a health strategy, what inflammation and silent chronic disease are doing beneath the surface, and how food, breath, love, sleep, and laughter are evidence-based medicine. He shares the science behind hibiscus tea, dark leafy greens, garlic, blueberries, and beets as blood pressure and heart health tools, and offers practical guidance for patients at every income level. Find Columbus https://drbatiste.com/ ▶ Subscribe on YouTube @resaelewissmd — new Visible Voices episodes on Wednesdays. 🎙️ Search "The Visible Voices Podcast" on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

In this episode of The Visible Voices Podcast, I speak with Dr. Michelle Finkel, emergency medicine physician turned entrepreneur and founder of Insider Medical Admissions — a specialized consulting business helping applicants navigate medical school, residency, fellowship, post-bac, and dental school admissions. Drawing on her experience as faculty at Massachusetts General Hospital and assistant residency director, Michelle shares her high-touch, human-centered approach to helping applicants find their voice, avoid the humility trap, and write with persuasion and originality. We also talk about what it means to embrace a nonlinear career — and why that shift in perspective can reduce stress and open unexpected doors. Find Michelle at insidermedicaladmissions.com ▶ Subscribe on YouTube @resaelewissmd — new Visible Voices episodes on Wednesdays. 🎙️ Search "The Visible Voices Podcast" on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

In this episode of the Visible Voices Podcast, I'm joined by Dr. Annahieta Kalantari  aka Dr. AK emergency and lifestyle medicine physician and founder of the Whole Human Health and Wellbeing Platform. The 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans were released in January 2026, and we dig into what changed, what the science actually says, and where industry influence shows up. We discuss the daily protein recommendation changes. We also get into the confusion caused by the new food pyramid graphic and how the Uncompromised Dietary Guidelines — a nonprofit effort with recommendations outside of industry is something to read. Correction: In the original recording of this episode, we inadvertently misspoke the protein intake recommendation in milligrams per kilogram — the correct unit is grams per kilogram of body weight (g/kg). The audio and transcript have been updated to reflect this correction. We apologize for the error! ▶ Subscribe on YouTube @resaelewissmd — new Visible Voices episodes on Wednesdays. 🎙️ Search "The Visible Voices Podcast" on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

First released as audio only. Re-edited and now available in video and audio. In lifestyle medicine, food is not a side conversation. It's the conversation. This week I speak with Desiree Nielsen— registered dietitian and plant-based recipe developer. Desiree Nielsen and I discuss what doctors miss when they skip the nutrition conversation, how gut microbiome health connects to long COVID and chronic disease, and why dietary fiber — not protein — is the most important nutrient right now. We break down the science of anti-inflammatory eating, plant diversity, omega-3s, and the Mediterranean diet, with a rapid-fire review of coffee, avocado, salmon, oat milk, soy milk, walnuts, and cinnamon.  Desiree shares a gut-friendly, plant-forward eating  that is never about deprivation — it's about flavor, function, and long-term wellbeing. Website: https://desireerd.com/ Podcast: Allsorts Podcast ▶ Subscribe to @ResaELewissMD — new episodes of The Visible Voices Podcast episode every Wednesday. 🎙️ Search "The Visible Voices Podcast" on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Dr. Jhonatan Bringas Dimitriades is the CEO and co-founder of Lapsi Health and the co-creator of Keikku — the world's first FDA-cleared digital stethoscope with an integrated AI scribe. The healthtech company and device were built alongside his co-founder and wife Dr. Diana van Stijn. Keikku listens to cardiac and pulmonary sounds, detects heart murmurs with 90% accuracy, and scribes physician-patient encounters real time at the bedside.  In this episode, we talk about the pediatric asthma patient that sparked Lapsi Health, why lung sounds are where the clinical misdiagnosis can happen, how MEMS microphone technology powers AI-assisted auscultation, and what multilingual AI scribing means for the future of point-of-care medicine. MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems devices are miniature sensors and actuators—combining electrical and mechanical components—found in smartphones, cars, and medical tools.  Jhonatan and I discuss the deskilling debate. He makes the case for why physicians need to be reskilling right now. ▶ Subscribe to @ResaELewissMD — new episodes The Visible Voices Podcast episode every Wednesday. 🎙️ Search "The Visible Voices Podcast" on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

First released as audio only. Re-edited and now available in video and audio. In this episode of the Visible Voices Podcast, I speak with Amanda Litman, co-founder and president of Run for Something. Co-founded in 2017 with Ross Morales Roquetteau, Run for Something is a multimillion-dollar political organization that recruits and supports millennials and Gen Z leaders running for local and state office. To date, the organization has helped elect over 1,650 candidates across all 50 states. We talk about the specific elected positions where healthcare expertise has direct policy impact, including hospital boards, school boards, library boards, state legislatures, and coroner seats. Amanda shares the three questions every candidate must be able to answer, how Run for Something supports candidates from sign-up through election day, and why local office — not Congress — is where community health gets decided. ▶ Subscribe to @ResaELewissMD — new The Visible Voices Podcast episode every Wednesday. 🎙️ Search "The Visible Voices Podcast" on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

In this episode of the Visible Voices Podcast, Francesca Donner joins. She is the founder and editor of The Persistent — a women-run media company that’s covering women for a change.  The Persistent is a digital journalism platform centering women's voices and stories. Francesca's two-decade career spans GQ, Forbes, Quartz, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, where she founded the gender vertical In Her Words. We discuss the persistent gap in how women's stories are told — and who tells them — why women are quoted as sources only 25% of the time, what it takes to leave a prestigious institution to build something new, and three micro skills for centering women's voices in your own life and work. If you enjoy the show subscribe on YouTube 📺 @resaelewissmd and forward to a friend today!