About Us

Aviya L. Levy, MD MS is a pediatric rheumatologist at Rady Children's Hospital. She earned her medical degree at the Alpert Medical School at Brown University in Providence, RI, completed her pediatrics residency at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx, NY and completed her fellowship in pediatric rheumatology at Seattle Children’s Hospital in Seattle, WA. She has a Masters in Health Services from the University of Washington and completed narrative medicine facilitator training through the Northwest Narrative Medicine Collaborative as well as the Digital Storytelling Online Certificate Program through StoryCenter. Dr. Levy is the founder and co-leader of the Narrative Medicine Workgroup affiliated with Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance (CARRA), a national organization focused on advancing research within pediatric rheumatology. She has also been elected to serve as the CARRA Cross Cutting Research Committee (CCRC) Vice Chair. She is the founder and co-leader of the Myositis International Health and research Collaborative Alliance (MIHRA) Psychological Impact and Wellbeing group, focused on raising awareness around mental health for patients living with myositis. 

Dr. Levy is passionate about narrative medicine as a therapeutic tool to address anxiety, depression and disconnectedness, particularly for patients with chronic illness. She has a particular interest in juvenile dermatomyositis and founded the Myositis Clinic at Rady Children’s Hospital. She has received several grants supporting her work in juvenile myositis as well as in narrative medicine, including funding through Harmony 4 Hope, Cure JM, and the University of Washington and the University of California. She has spearheaded and published narrative medicine-based research initiatives bringing the narrative arts to patients and providers in the pediatric rheumatology realm, as well as published articles in the fields of juvenile dermatomyositis and chronic recurrent multifocal osteomyelitis, among others. Dr. Levy has been honored as a member of the Gold Humanism Honor Society and Sigma Xi Scientific Research Honor Society and has been recognized for teaching excellence with residents. She also completed a Sanford Empathy Fellowship and serves as Affiliate Faculty with the Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion. 

Suzanne Edison, MA, MFA, is a poet who writes on illness and healing. Her poetry book, Since the House Is Burning, from MoonPath Press was published in 2022. Her chapbook, The Body Lives Its Undoing, was published in 2018 by Benaroya Research Institute. Poetry can be found in: Michigan Quarterly Review; JAMA; HEAL; SWWIM Every Day; Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine; Lily Poetry Review; The Ekphrastic Review, and in several anthologies including: The Healing Art of Writing, Volume One. Suzanne is a Hedgebrook 2019 alum and teaches writing workshops in Seattle and through UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Wellness Center for Chronic Conditions. She is also the Mental Health Coordinator at the Cure JM Foundation and is a member of the Mental Health Task Force and working group of CARRA. She also co-leads the Narrative Medicine sub-group with Aviya Lanis, MD. Additional information can be found here.

Hanna Saltzman, MD is a pediatric rheumatology fellow at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. She attended medical school at the University of Michigan, where she was inducted into the Gold Humanism Society and Alpha Omega Alpha, and pediatrics residency at the University of Utah, where she received the Service to Children advocacy award. Before medical school, she studied anthropology at Williams College, where she graduated summa cum laude with high honors for an environmental health ethnography thesis. She then worked for several years in environmental health advocacy and health journalism, which led her to medical school. In her career as a pediatric rheumatologist, she has continued these passions through narrative medicine, creative writing, and qualitative, patient-centered environmental health research.

Dr. Saltzman’s current research explores barriers and facilitators to nature engagement among adolescents with rheumatic diseases, with a goal of designing accessible and effective nature-based interventions to support health and well-being. That work has been generously funded by the CARRA-Arthritis Foundation Fellows’ Grant and the Nature and Human Health Utah pilot grant. In addition, she is earning her Master of Fine Arts in Nonfiction Writing through the low-residency program at Pacific University. Her essays, flash nonfiction, and poetry can be found in JAMA, River Teeth, The Sun, Terrain.org, Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, and various other outlets. Her environmental health essay “Halophilia” was selected for the Notable Essay list in Best American Essays 2024. Her published creative work can be found here.