Building a Mental Wellness Toolkit for CKD

This fireside chat webinar will feature expert speakers in nephrology and mindfulness discussing how CKD impacts mental health and teaching practical coping strategies. You will also have the chance to hear inspiring personal stories from a patient with lived experience. Engage in a Q&A and mindfulness practice at the end of the session and leave with a resource list to help you take steps toward better mental wellness.

This webinar will be hosted in English and feature live interpretation in French.

The Kidney Foundation would like to thank our sponsors for making the 2023 Kidney Foundation Webinar Series possible.

View and download our resource list

Presenters

Amrit Shankar

Amrit is an ex-investment banker, skydiver and adventure-lover. He started his meditation journey 9 years ago and has since been enjoying the massive benefits of regular breathwork and meditation practice. He enjoys creating new mindfulness programs for people living with chronic disease, and over the past 5 years, has created meditation and breathwork programs for multiple medical research projects.

Dr. Clara Bohm

Dr. Clara Bohm is a nephrologist with the Manitoba Renal Program and assistant professor and clinical researcher at the University of Manitoba. She received her MD from McMaster University and completed her internal medicine residency at the University of Saskatchewan and nephrology training at Dalhousie University. She also received a Master's in Public Health from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in 2014. Since 2005, as the Medical Lead of the Manitoba Renal Program Exercise and Wellness Program, she has developed a variety of clinical exercise initiatives for individuals with all stages of CKD. Her research interests lie in the effects of exercise on physical function, symptoms and quality of life in individuals with chronic kidney disease.

Dr. Mona Ben m’rad

Mona Ben m’rad is a physician, a nephrologist, she graduated in Paris, France, in 2005 (Université Paris Cité). She had polyvalent training in systemic diseases that could affect kidney health, in Paris and did 3fellowships in Paris in: 1/ Intensive Nephrology Care, 2/Nephrology, and 3/Internal Medicine (at the reference center of Vasculitides and Scleroderma in Cochin Hospital, under the supervision of Pr. Loic Guillevin) in Paris, France. She has an MSc from Université Paris Cité in cellular biology, and her research project was on the mechanisms of repair after acute kidney injury in the context of acute tubular necrosis. She published on hypersensitivity syndrome which can have a huge impact on kidneys.

She emigrated to Montreal in 2012. She has had a position in the hospital of Saint-Jean sur Richelieu, in the Great Montreal area in Quebec since 2013.

She has an interest in and a passion for all mind-body medicine tools that could help healthcare professionals and patients living with chronic conditions in managing stress and anxiety. She organized a mindfulness meditation-based program adapted for patients undergoing hemodialysis and a yoga and breath-work program for her colleagues during the COVID-19 pandemic. She enrolled in January 2023 in an MSc in mental health at McGill. Her research project (under the supervision of Sr Soham Rej, psychiatrist specialist in mind-body medicine, and Dr Rita Suri, nephrologist at McGill) will be on the use of virtual reality to help engage patients undergoing hemodialysis in exercise.

Julie Dwyer

Julie Dwyer, MSc, PhD (c) is a clinician, researcher, and entrepreneur with over 10 years' experience. She offers diverse trauma-informed mindfulness education, training, mental performance and corporate wellness programs through her companies Centre for Mindfulness and Ease. She has worked with over 60 organizations to improve well-being and has 8 years of clinical experience in the public health system.

Julie holds a M.Sc. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Edinburgh, where she studied mindfulness-based interventions for anxiety, and is currently completing a PhD at Memorial University with a research focus on chronic pain.

Julie is passionate about improving access to evidence-based wellness resources.

The Kidney Foundation, would like to thank our sponsors for making the 2023 Kidney Foundation Webinar Series possible.