News and Announcements

Sharing your personal experience is a powerful tool to reshape the healthcare landscape. Your lived experience has the unique power to shift perspectives for doctors, policymakers, and the general public.

However, turning personal memories into an award-winning submission requires a deliberate structure. To make the process as straightforward and simple as possible, we’ve created the following resources:

• The LymeX Narrative Coaching Framework Guide: This guide breaks the official coaching framework into an actionable, step-by-step roadmap. It is designed to help you easily move from a raw "Napkin Sketch" to a refined entry competing for the $100,000 Grand Prize. > Access the Guide Here.

• Crowdicity Platform Video Walkthrough: A quick, visual guide that takes the guesswork out of the technology. This video shows you exactly how to navigate, use, and submit your story on the Crowdicity platform seamlessly. > Watch the Video Here.

💡 Pro-Tip for the Grand Prize: If your story includes clinical or treatment insights, convert them into a Case Report on the CURE ID platform. Upload the confirmation PDF with your final entry form to qualify for the largest prize tiers.

Your voice matters, and getting it out into the world shouldn't feel like a hurdle. Use these tools to map out your submission at your own pace, and let’s change the future of Lyme care together.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for our LymeX Healthathon Kickoff on Monday, June 29th. We're so excited to see everyone's submissions over the next 5 weeks.

Here are the resources from the event:

• The video recording for those who were unable to attend, and for those who want to watch the webinar again.

• The full kickoff deck PDF which includes details about ways to participate, storytelling guide, prize information and evaluation criteria

• The printable one-page guide to the Healthathon entry form

NOTE: We are compiling and verifying answers to the questions asked during the event, and we'll update our blog and FAQ with that information once it's ready.

In the meantime, please don't hesitate to send any questions about the Healthathon to lymex@healthplusprogram.io.

How might we turn people's lived experiences with Lyme and other tickborne diseases into shared stories and actionable insights that help drive solutions?

The LymeX Healthathon is a collaborative event with precisely that goal.

Register for our kickoff event, where we’ll share more details about the Healthathon, walk through registration, prizes, and special remarks from Dr. Kristen Honey of HHS.

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When you look at the momentum behind the LymeX Partnership today, it’s easy to forget that it started with a simple, powerful idea: the Lyme Innovation Roundtable.

Long before this became a multi-million dollar federal framework, a dedicated community of data advocates, clinicians, and patient champions came together to prove that crowdsourced, patient-driven data could transform how we approach complex illnesses.

The Journey at a Glance

• 2019–2020: We launched our first Healthathon and Health Plus initiatives, running three small, targeted proof-of-concept grants.

• The Intermission: Innovation isn't always a straight line. Following that initial momentum, the project went through a quiet four-year period. While many early project updates were lost to old, deactivated web servers, the core community and data survived.

• The Breakthrough: After years of steady advocacy, the rigorous data and success metrics from those first three small grants spoke for themselves. Federal leadership recognized the model's potential and committed to a historic $25 million investment to officially establish the LymeX Partnership.

Preserving Our Roots

We have intentionally preserved our original 2019 and 2020 blog posts right here on the platform in our new Historical Archive section.

We keep them visible because they are a testament to grit and continuity. They prove that the frameworks we are using today to tackle invisible illnesses and cost-of-illness tracking are deeply rooted, stress-tested, and built to last.

To everyone who shared an idea in the early days, and to everyone submitting solutions across our new 2026 tracks today: thank you for being part of this legacy. Let’s keep driving it forward!

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