Episode 57: AIP Community Update — Events, Advocacy & Research

Living with autoimmune disease is deeply personal—but the forces that shape diagnosis, care, and long-term outcomes extend far beyond any one individual. Research priorities, advocacy efforts, and community education all influence who gets seen, supported, and served within the autoimmune landscape.

In this first Quarterly Community Update episode of the Autoimmune Wellness Podcast, Mickey Trescott steps back to look at what’s happening across the broader autoimmune community right now. These quarterly episodes are designed to help listeners stay informed and oriented—without overwhelm, fear, or chasing headlines.

This episode introduces a new recurring structure focused on three areas that directly shape autoimmune care: advocacy, research, and community education. Mickey is joined by three regular contributors who bring both professional expertise and lived experience to these conversations.

First, Jamie-Nicole Martin, chronic illness advocate and founder of the AIP BIPOC Network, joins Mickey to discuss autoimmune awareness, systems-level advocacy, and community-based initiatives designed to improve equity, access, and representation in autoimmune care.

Next, Sybil Cooper, PhD, immunologist and AIP Certified Coach, breaks down recent research shaping the autoimmune landscape, including a major Mayo Clinic study on autoimmune disease prevalence and the significance of the 2025 Nobel Prize recognition of regulatory T cells (Tregs).

Finally, Jaime Hartman, National Board Certified Health & Wellness Coach, host of the AIP Summit, and co-teacher of the AIP Certified Coach Program, shares updates from across the AIP community, including emerging education trends, Summit highlights, and professional training opportunities.

Together, these conversations highlight why systemic change matters, what the latest science is actually telling us, and how community-centered education continues to evolve to support people living with autoimmune disease.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

1. Why autoimmune care is shaped by advocacy, research, and education—not just individual choices
2. How Jamie-Nicole Martin and the AIP BIPOC Network support both personal healing and systems-level change
3. Upcoming advocacy events, including the ROCK Summit and ROCK Community Expo
4. How monthly AIP BIPOC Roundtables create safer spaces for dialogue and collective insight
5. Key findings from a large Mayo Clinic study explained by Sybil Cooper, PhD
6. The difference between prevalence and incidence—and why that distinction matters
7. Which autoimmune conditions are most common and how patterns differ by sex
8. Why having multiple autoimmune diagnoses is more common than most people realize
9. What the Nobel Prize recognition of regulatory T cells (Tregs) signals for the future of autoimmune research
10. How Jaime Hartman sees AIP education expanding beyond food into lifestyle, hormones, athletics, and life-stage support
11. How to access ongoing AIP education, community connection, and trained practitioner support

Resources:

1. AIP BIPOC Network – Advocacy initiatives, community events, and monthly roundtables
2. ROCK Wellness Weekend – ROCK Summit & ROCK Community Expo (Houston, TX)
3. AIP BIPOC Network Donation Link - Help fund their programs for the autoimmune community
4. Mayo Clinic Autoimmune Disease Prevalence Study
5. Nobel Prize 2025 Press Release - Team discovering T-regulatory cells
6. AIP Summit – Annual event, replays, and ongoing community access
7. AIP Certified Coach Program & Practitioner Directory – Professional training and global directory of AIP-trained support

Episode Timeline:

00:00 – Introduction to the Quarterly Community Update series

01:21 – Overview of advocacy, research, and community education

02:29 – Autoimmune awareness & advocacy with Jamie-Nicole Martin

04:41 – ROCK Summit & ROCK Community Expo

06:32 – AIP BIPOC Roundtables and global community support

08:45 – How to support advocacy work

11:15 – Research update with Sybil Cooper, PhD

15:48 – Most common autoimmune conditions and diagnostic patterns

17:45 – Sex differences and multiple autoimmune diagnoses

20:20 – Nobel Prize recognition of regulatory T cells (Tregs)

23:32 – AIP community updates with Jaime Hartman

24:31 – AIP Summit recap and emerging trends

26:35 – Lifestyle, hormones, and life-stage support in AIP

31:23 – AIP Certified Coach Program overview

35:13 – Wrap-up and closing reflections

Living with autoimmune disease can feel deeply personal.

The symptoms, the decisions, the daily trade-offs, all of it happens

in your body and in your life.

But the forces that shape autoimmune care are often much

bigger than any one individual.

Research decisions determine which questions get asked and which don't.

Advocacy efforts influence who gets seen, who gets heard, and whose

experiences are taken seriously.

And community education shapes how information is shared, understood,

and applied in the real world.

When those pieces move forward together, they create meaningful change, not

just for each of us as individuals, but for the entire autoimmune community.

Welcome back to the Autoimmune Wellness Podcast.

I'm your host, Mickey Trescott, and starting this year I'm

introducing a quarterly community update series here on the podcast.

These episodes are designed to help you pause, zoom out, and get oriented

around what's happening across the autoimmune landscape, without overwhelm,

fear, or chasing the headlines.

Each quarter, we'll look at three consistent areas that directly

shape autoimmune care: advocacy, research, and community education.

The topics will evolve, but the structure and the voices will stay the same.

In every quarterly update you'll hear from three regular contributors.

First, Jamie-Nicole Martin, chronic illness advocate and founder of the AIP

BIPOC Network, joins me to talk about autoimmune awareness and advocacy,

including community initiatives, events, and ways to get involved

in building more equitable support.

Next, sybil Cooper, a PhD trained immunologist and AIP Certified

Coach helps us make sense of current research and emerging trends in

autoimmune health, translating complex science into real world context.

And finally, Jamie Hartman, my partner and co-teacher at the AIP Certified

Coach Program, joins me to share updates from the broader AIP community,

including events like the AIP Summit, practitioner education and what's coming

up next for both providers and patients.

And before we dive in, a quick reminder that this podcast is for educational

and informational purposes only.

The conversations you will hear today are not intended to diagnose,

treat, or replace medical care.

Always consult your healthcare provider before making changes to your

diet, lifestyle, or treatment plan.

Let's begin with our first quarterly segment on autoimmune

awareness and advocacy.

Joining me for the segment is Jamie Nicole Martin.

Jamie is an AIP Certified Coach, a chronic illness advocate, and the

founder and CEO of the AIP BIPOC Network.

She lives with Hashimoto's thyroiditis and narcolepsy, and

brings both lived experience and professional training to her work.

With a background in fitness and functional movement coaching,

Jamie supports individuals and communities through AIP informed

coaching and advocacy, centering equity, access, and culturally

responsive care in autoimmune health.

Hi, Jamie.

Hey, Mickey.

How are you?

I'm doing great.

Thanks for being here.

Before we get into specific programs or events, I want to make sure that

our listeners really understand what the AIP BIPOC Network is.

Can you briefly explain what you guys do, who it's for, and why it

exists within the autoimmune space?

Absolutely.

In essence, we focus on advocacy and not just policy, it's people.

It's also community building.

Our work is grounded in a dual framework, at the individual

level that includes AIP informed education, support, and also healing.

So that's one aspect of the dual framework.

The other aspect of it is at the systems level, it focuses on

access, inclusion and prevention.

AIP!

Personal healing happens one person at a time.

Advocacy changes conditions for entire communities.

We are about creating spaces where lived experience is respected and protected.

Representation and access is not optional, they're foundational to healing.

So this work matters because healing is personal, systems are not.

But both of those things are extremely important in this work that we do.

Thank you so much and I really appreciate that explanation of

how your work affects both the personal level and the systems level because we

are all affected by these systems, whether we know it or experience it or not.

That work is so important and the AIP BIPOC network hosts in-person

events right now for people in Houston, with a couple coming up.

Can you share the two events coming up and why they are important,

even for people who aren't near Houston to attend in person?

Absolutely.

I'm excited to tell you about that.

We have coming up in February Rock Wellness Weekend, which used to be

just Rock the Block, in and of itself.

So now it's a two day experience that we're hosting February 20th through 21st.

Again, talk about systems level.

It's an experience designed to connect those systems with real community access.

Friday is the Rock Summit, bringing practitioners, advocates and people with

lived experience together around research, opportunity, collaboration and knowledge.

So "ROCK", we're bringing them together around those things.

Then on Saturday we have Rock the Block, which is a free community facing health

expo focused on, again, "ROCK", which is reaching our communities and kids.

Together, the summit and the Expo show how wellness, education, and equity

work best when professionals and communities are engaged at the same time.

These events raise awareness by making autoimmune disease visible across

both professional and public spaces.

This work matters because awareness grows when learning access and

lived experiences are not silo.

I love that and I look forward to the day when these events

are really modeled around the country and that we have events like that for

both the stakeholders, the practitioners and the community health organizations,

and then the patients, which is really what you're bringing all together.

So if you're in Houston, make sure you guys check it out.

And the work that you do also connects the global autoimmune community, so

you're not just a local nonprofit, you're also engaging in education and

support for everyone around the world.

And you do that through the AIP BIPOC Roundtables.

Can you spend a couple minutes explaining what they are and who

they're for and why they're so meaningful to your advocacy work?

Absolutely, they're meaningful because this is how we started.

That's one way that they're meaningful, just through conversation alone.

You can make a world of difference because people see what it's like to

experience this and they don't feel alone.

But these Roundtables are intentionally designed as safer spaces where people

can speak honestly without having to explain or defend their experiences.

And this is from the guests that we have to the people who are in the comments.

Saying Amen, or just sharing their stories because they're similar to

what they're hearing from our guests.

These round tables are open to the community and for anybody, whether you

are a patient, whether you're a caregiver, whether you're a provider, your voice

in these conversations is important.

There's a common theme.

Conversations are focused on education, listening, and also identifying patterns

that are often missed in clinical settings and in research settings.

Over time, these conversations surface insights that help shape advocacy

priorities, partnerships, and programming.

That's why I'm so excited to continue these round tables monthly throughout

the year because they are the basis of what we do outside of those round tables.

So this ongoing dialogue matters because trust and solutions develop over time.

It's not a one and done.

People can attend, you mentioned when, where can they attend these Roundtables?

They can start by registering online when we announce them, they're typically

the fourth Tuesday of every month.

We have a registration link on our webpage where people can sign up to attend.

Yeah, I love that.

And if you guys follow me on Instagram I often repost AIP

BIPOC network is on Instagram too.

That's where you can find the direct links and the marketing for whoever

the speaker is for the Roundtables.

And I would really encourage you to attend those.

There's always really good, lively community discussions.

It's a good way to feel connected to the AIP community.

For anybody who's listening and they're like, this really resonates,

I really want to support this work.

What are some meaningful ways that our listeners can get involved

no matter where they live?

Absolutely.

On our webpage, we have a way that you can support the AIP BIPOC Network.

And it doesn't matter where you are in the nation or in the world.

We have opportunities for you to contribute, whether it be volunteering

online, helping to build out our database.

Whether it be donating, you can donate to the AIP BIPOC Network.

There are several ways that you can do that, including donor advised

funds, you can set up your own team.

And then also just by sharing the work that we do, a lot of times

just people seeing it on your timeline, or at your doctor's office.

We've had a lot of referrals that way as well.

Just getting the word out in your normal day-to-day conversation makes the world

of difference to the work that we do.

Awesome.

Well, thank you so much, Jamie, for being here, and we'll be sure to link everything

that we talked about in the show notes, including the Roundtables, ways that

people can support you and follow you on your website and social media.

Jamie, thank you for the work that you're doing and for bringing advocacy

and awareness into this space in such a grounded and human way.

Thank you Mickey, it was a pleasure.

So next we're going to shift into the research

side of this quarterly update.

And joining me for this segment is Sybil Cooper.

Sybil has a PhD in immunology.

She is also an AIP Certified Coach and is a functional medicine trained health coach

specializing in midlife women's health.

She brings together a deep background in immunology, sleep, and metabolic

health with her own lived experience navigating multiple autoimmune diseases,

including Sjogren's, myasthenia gravis, and connective tissue disease.

Sybil helps women address the root causes of fatigue, brain fog, hormonal

shifts, and autoimmune symptoms through personalized, whole person strategies.

So we're going to give Sybil a call right now.

Hi Sibyl, how are you doing today?

Hi Mickey.

I'm doing fantastic, I'm so excited to be here with you today.

I'm excited to see you too.

I really wanted you here for this quarterly update because you bring such

a unique lens, both that deep research training, the functional medicine,

and all of your rich lived experience.

It feels like the right moment to zoom out and talk about what

the science is actually telling us about autoimmune disease.

I wanted to get us started with a study that you shared with me

a couple months ago from the Mayo Clinic that really reframed things.

They published a large study looking at how common autoimmune disease actually

is in the US, and this is one of people's most common questions when they are

first diagnosed or they have a family member diagnosed with autoimmune disease.

Can you walk us through some of the big takeaways from this study?

Mm-hmm.

Well, it was, you know, pretty shocking to read that this type of study really

hadn't been done before at this scale.

The big takeaway is that over 15 million Americans are

dealing with autoimmune disease.

That's a lot of people.

That's 4.6% of the US, which is a pretty significant number, have been diagnosed

with at least one autoimmune disease.

And this figure, since 2016, there's been like four other studies, some

worldwide, some in the UK that figure was between seven and 10%.

And so this number actually came back a little bit lower than that, but it's still

a significant public health challenge.

As well as to the families that are involved when someone is

impacted by autoimmune disease.

So it really confirms what we already know is that it's a

significant healthcare crisis.

One of the things that really stood out to me was

how conservative the criteria were.

You know, when we're looking at autoimmune disease, it's challenging with some

conditions to be put in a bucket and get a diagnosis, and those measures

really vary when we're talking about over a hundred autoimmune conditions.

Can you explain how they defined an autoimmune diagnosis in this study?

So basically you go to a doctor and you tell them, for example, you

have, you know, dry mouth and dry eyes, and they may put a presumptive diagnosis

code for Sjogren's on your chart.

And then they order antibody testing and then, you know, two or three

months later they get the data that's negative and they, you know, figure

out that your dry mouth and dry eyes was due to some medication you were on.

So if you only looked at that one diagnosis code, that would falsely inflate

how many people have autoimmune disease.

So to get around that, they used two diagnosis codes that were more than 30

days apart as that being a confirmative diagnosis for an autoimmune disease.

On one hand it makes the data much cleaner.

On the other hand, you're going to miss the people who are very

early in their autoimmune diagnosis journey, which we know can sometimes

take five or 10 years, right?

Or longer.

In that way it's it's more conservative, but it gives us great confidence that

this is actually the bottom floor of the number, that it's not falsely inflated.

Yeah, I really like that in the bottom floor because that " who

has an autoimmune disease" question really can encompass, depending on

how you define an autoimmune disease.

And we know that there are so many people that are in that five, 10,

even 15 year range of having a subclinical symptoms, categorize them?

We don't know because we don't really have this, it's not black or white.

So thank you for explaining.

Mm-hmm.

Further too, I'd like to clarify incedence versus prevalence.

The study was in prevalence.

Those are very defined research terms.

What do people need to know about that?

So prevalence is a summation of all the autoimmune disease diagnoses

up until a certain point, whereas an incidence is like a specific timeframe.

So say like in one year.

So if something had a low prevalence, but a high incidence, say it's

something like COVID, right?

It was a very defined period of time, it's not chronic.

We now know there is a chronic part to it, but it's not a chronic

disease process that takes a long term to get to the end point.

But the incidence was very high.

As opposed to something where you have that's chronic, and so the prevalence

is high, and that's going to have a greater impact on the medical system,

on the healthcare system, as well as the families, even if the incidence is low.

So the number of people impacted per year is low, but the people who are

impacted, that number builds each year.

That makes perfect sense.

So one of the most interesting parts of this study was the breakdown of

the most common autoimmune conditions.

Can you talk about what showed up most often, overall?

The most common was rheumatoid arthritis.

Followed closely by psoriasis and type one diabetes.

We also saw high numbers for Graves disease and Crohn's disease,

which were fourth and sixth.

Autoimmune thyroiditis, or Hashimoto's, as most commonly called ranked fifth,

with MS or multiple sclerosis ranking seventh, and then the other connected

tissue diseases systemic lupus and Sjogren's ranked eighth and 10th.

Then rounding out the top 10 was ulcerative colitis in the ninth spot.

I remember we were discussing being surprised at some of

the conditions that didn't rank as high as expected, especially Hashimoto's.

Can you talk about that, maybe why that might not have been a little higher on the

list, which we generally say is, you know, the most common autoimmune condition.

Yeah, we hear that, you know that statement quite often

and you know, podcasts even in books.

And I think it's primarily because Hashimoto's, it's easy to diagnose

because of the antibodies that are used as the primary criteria,

and that's often done by a general practitioner or a nurse practitioner.

Whereas the data that was collected for this study were five large scale medical

centers throughout the US and so they're just not seeing patients with Hashimoto's.

Yeah.

In

So I think it's.

specialists are probably seeing the most severe

cases of whatever autoimmune condition fills their specialty.

Like IBD, gastroenterology, dermatology.

I think that's spot on.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

The study also broke things down by sex, which,

we found really interesting.

What did it show when it comes to autoimmune disease

in females versus males?

In their study it was almost two to one: 6% of females were

diagnosed compared to about 3% of males.

I think that it was really important for us to embrace that millions

of of men are being impacted by autoimmune disease as well.

Yeah.

And the top five conditions for men and women were very different.

Can we talk a little bit about that too, and reference that list?

For women, the, so the top five was rheumatoid arthritis,

graves disease, psoriasis, autoimmune thyroiditis, and type one diabetes.

And for men, it was psoriasis, type one diabetes, rheumatoid

arthritis, Crohn's disease, and ulcerative colitis in that order.

And in fact, type one diabetes had a higher prevalence

in males than in females.

So it definitely just highlights for us that this is a significant

disease burden for for men as well.

Yeah.

Depending on the condition, the prevalence can be flip flopped, so good to know.

Another stat that really jumped out was how many people had more

than one autoimmune diagnosis.

I mean, I'm a member of that club, I know a lot of us are members, but it is really

good to have some information there.

What did they find?

24% were diagnosed with more than one autoimmune disease,

and it just highlights that our medical system is highly segmented.

So there's a cardiologist, there's a neurologist, endocrinologist, whereas the

immune system impacts the entire body.

And so when you have one autoimmune disease, it increases the likelihood

that you might develop another one.

And also it conflates the data, 'cause like I have probably three or four

diagnosis codes for autoimmune diseases.

So in the other studies that would be counted as four different people.

Whereas in this study, it would accurately be counted as one.

And so I think the data's a little bit more clear.

Oh, that's really great to know.

Mm-hmm.

Thank you for the breakdown of that study, I

hope that everyone listening found that interesting and validating

and maybe have some information to share with their family or friends.

Sybil and I also want to zoom out for the moment because we also had some big

science news in the world right now.

The 2025 Nobel Prize recognized the discovery of regulatory T

cells or otherwise known as Tregs, which feels incredibly relevant to

discuss, especially when we have an immunologist talking research today.

So Sybil, can you explain what Treg cells do, and just briefly why this matters

for people with autoimmune disease?

Mm-hmm.

I mean, back when I was in graduate school, in the nineties,

it was really difficult to get funding to research the possibility of the

existence of what back then was postulated to be "T suppressor" cells.

Science, as much as we hope that it's maneuverable like a jet ski,

it's more like a giant cruise ship, it takes a lot to turn it in

a completely different direction.

But we have arrived in 2025 with the the Nobel Prize for Tregs.

Think of it as you have a car, you have a gas pedal, you have the brakes,

you have your cells that are surveying the body, that's the gas pedal.

They're looking for the pathogens to combat.

The Treg cells are your brakes.

You want the immune system to respond just right.

Not too much, not too little.

It's the whole Goldilocks principle.

The same way in the nervous system, we have the parasympathetic, which

is putting the brakes on, and we have the sympathetic system that

allows you to react to something.

You need that balance.

You don't want the immune system to wreck so much that you have

collateral damage of other tissues, and that's the role of the Treg cells.

Awesome.

And hopefully that means a lot more research in this

area now that it's exciting.

And more treatments and more ideas for the ways that people with

autoimmune disease can live better.

Because T regulatory cells are definitely the window into how

we make things better, right?

Yes, because Treg cells, there can either be not

enough of them, or the ones that you have are not functioning properly.

So if we can discern in each individual which case is operating,

then it's more precision medicine.

Instead of coming in with something like prednisone or you know, some

of the other current biologics that puts patients at risk for infectious

disease because you're basically shutting down the entire immune system.

Now we can be very selective and just calm the immune system

down if we know where to look.

Awesome.

Well, what I love about this is how closely it aligns with what this

community has been learning for years, that supporting immune regulation through

whole person care actually matters.

And I will drop the link to the Mayo Clinic study and the Treg nobel Prize

press release in the show notes for anyone who wants to dive deeper.

Thank you so much for helping us unpack this Sybil, and we'll see you next time.

Bye.

For our final segment, we're going to zoom out and look at what's happening

across the broader AIP community.

Joining me for this segment is Jamie Hartman.

Jamie is a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach and AIP Certified

Coach and my partner and co-teacher in the AIP Certified Coach Program.

She holds a master's degree in educational psychology and has

more than 25 years of experience in education and instructional design.

Jamie discovered the Autoimmune Protocol while managing her own post-surgical

Crohn's disease and has since become a leader in AIP education, serving as the

organizer and the host of the AIP Summit, the AIP Summit podcast, and helping train

the next generation of AIP practitioners.

Hi, Jamie.

Hey, Mickey.

I'm really glad to have you here for this segment

because this is where we get to zoom out and look at what's happening

in the broader AIP community.

We just wrapped up the AIP Summit earlier this month.

Can you start by reminding listeners what the AIP Summit is and why

it's such an important event?

The AIP Summit is an annual gathering presented by AIP Certified

Coaches, but it's more than that.

It started in 2020, really at the time, thinking it might

just be a one-time event.

But it's expanded now to be more about an ongoing education resource for people.

Community, a place where our audience can access expert voices in one place,

and where all the AIP Certified Coaches can share their incredible wisdom.

I love that, and it's really been a rich

resource for everyone since then.

This year's summit wrapped up a couple weeks ago in early January.

What can you share about how everything went this year?

We had 29 sessions, five of them were in

French, which was really cool.

This is the first time we've been able to use some multilingual support.

We were able to use technology to make this an even bigger resource.

We've always had a global community, but now we're able to integrate,

accessing resources in other languages.

So the presentations that were delivered in French and those that

were delivered in English all had closed captioning that could then be

translated by the individual attendee.

In their own app, so they could get transcript or get captions

in their language of choice.

So that was really exciting this year.

And it's really evolved over the years.

Technology has been a big part of that.

It started out being all about information and now it's much more

about community and connection.

I've attended a lot of summits over the years and I think this

one, I have to give you a big high five for just adapting with the technology

and using it because I have never seen a summit that is adapted into all the

languages for anyone, especially for free.

I love that you integrated that and are working on making

it accessible to everyone.

So from your perspective as the host, Jamie, what were some of the standout

talks or themes that really resonated with the AIP community this year?

Well, we had a couple cooking demonstrations,

those are always my favorite.

I love watching people cook.

We had the chef from Urban AIP demonstrating some budget friendly

cooking techniques, which was awesome.

We also had a sprouting demonstration from one of our coaches over

in the Czech Republic, Lucie Šitinová, which was very cool.

Every year she's done something really cool, and this year she shared something

new for me, so I learned something there.

There were a lot of presentations that touched on nutrient density, but

lifestyle is probably even more key.

We had two presentations from the perspective of autoimmune

athletes, which is really exciting.

One was on sleep and hormones.

Several were on how mindset and thought patterns impact the immune system.

So we're really seeing a lot of focus on all of the pieces, not

just the diet, but all those other pieces that have so much to do with

how we manage autoimmune disease.

I really love that and I tuned into one of the

presentations on AIP for athletes.

And I think it's a great expansion because some of our listeners might be

in different subsets of the community and just finding the thing that they're really

working on right now, which for me is exercising and integrating that in a way

that helps me feel good in my autoimmune body, I found that really helpful.

What do these talks reflect about where you think AIP as a movement is heading?

Well, it's really like what you were just saying, it's a

lot more expansive in scope, really supportive of people in all life stages.

So the idea of both an autoimmune athlete and somebody maybe approaching midlife

who's recognizing that their hormones are impacting them now in a different way.

As a recognition that as we travel through life stages, we always say

this, your body is always changing, your life is always changing, and so your

implementation of what you learn through AIP is also going to change inevitably.

And it's just a good reminder of the fact that while we do the elimination phase of

AIP for a discreet period of time, we're living in an autoimmune body, forever.

And so there's always these other pieces that can be addressed and

readdressed, and adjusted and tweaked, and dealt with again.

And they're going to continue to be that way.

I love that.

And personally I'm very here for the discussion of AIP and autoimmunity

and perimenopause and menopause.

Mm-hmm.

Which I was really happy to see a lot of presentations

on hormones, but I think that's going to be a big thing for 2026.

So for anybody listening, saying I've totally missed this,

what are their options now?

Because even though the Summit is done, I know that you've

got some ways to support them.

Right.

So the annual summit happens that first or second week in January every year.

But we've really recognized that there's a hunger for more than just

that one time dump of information.

So we have an ongoing community now that's part of the AIP Summit,

really expanding that from beyond.

But that content that we recorded, we presented everything live

and recorded, everything will be available for people we're going

to have three seasonal encores.

The first one will start March 19th.

So for anybody who's hearing this now and is like, I really want

to check that out, they can mark their calendar for March 19th.

They could also consider maybe becoming a member of our community.

There's a fee for access to the archives, but it does give you

access to a lot of information as well as some additional perks.

It's not just a one-time event.

There was a time when we first started this where that was

really what people wanted.

They wanted to purchase this collection of information and download it,

and now it's more about community.

That's really one of the big things that I see evolving over time as I do this each

year, is that it's much more about that ongoing community now than it is about the

individual, like just information dump.

When we think about who the membership is maybe best for, it's for those

people who recognize that maybe they have the knowledge right now, or most

of the knowledge they need for their current season of life or their current

moment, they may be looking for that to evolve with them over time and get

that support from somebody who they know has walked that walk already and

can be there with them and support them as they're going through it.

I love that.

And I definitely see a lot more community engagement for the AIP

world coming soon because social media used to feel like community, but it

really doesn't feel that way anymore.

So I love that you have put this together in a way that people can connect on a

deeper level and access that community.

Another big thing that is coming up is a new enrollment for the AIP Certified

Coach program opening on February 11th.

Now, our listeners have heard me talk about it but I would love for you to

explain it clearly from the angles of both the providers and then patients.

First from the provider perspective.

So we have the AIP Certified Coach practitioner training program.

It is designed for somebody who already has some kind of what we

end up calling a base certification.

That's the lingo that we use, but they're already a practitioner of some kind.

That might be a practitioner in the conventional medical sense.

We've had doctors and nurses and physical therapists and dieticians.

Those conventional doctors, have taken this program to become AIP Certified

Coaches, but also like health coaches like myself or holistic nutritionists or

other practitioners of different types.

We've had fitness professionals, know lots of different people who have some

kind of scope of practice where they work with people either exclusively or

just as part of their client or patient load that have autoimmune disease.

So that's who it's for.

And what we teach them is how they can help people use the

Autoimmune Protocol themselves.

So one of the things I think that we won't get too deep into the details here,

but I think one of the things that you really get when you take our program

that's unique that you, that's hard to learn on your own is that initial piece

of how do you evaluate if your client or patient is a good candidate right

now for making those major changes.

And if they are, perhaps not quite ready, how do you help them get ready?

I know that's a big concern that we see a lot, the other side I see

somebody who's done AIP on their own and it was not really presented to

them at the best time or the best way.

And so that's an important skill that our practitioners learn.

Awesome.

And then for anybody listening who is interested in hiring an

AIP Certified Coach, what can they expect and what does that look like?

How do they find that support?

They can expect to get, if they hire an AIP Certified

Coach, they expect to get somebody who has that first primary training in

whatever their area of expertise is.

And then they have that additional training from us that helps them

support you in a personalized way.

They are trained and able to help you with troubleshooting, help you investigate

what might be going on if you're not seeing the results from it that you

thought you would, if you're having any difficulties with implementing it or

going through the reintroduction process, they can be an invaluable resource there.

Your other question, how can they find an AIP Certified Coach?

They can go to our website, AIPCertified.com and look for the link

that says " directory" and they have a listing there of everybody who we have

trained who's currently practicing.

There are practitioners, like Jamie said all over the natural

conventional healthcare spectrum and even types of practitioners that

you wouldn't expect mental health, there are occupational therapists,

there are physical therapists.

So you know, if you have a very specific thing, don't hesitate

to search that directory.

And also a reminder that these are providers all over the world

and speaking multiple languages.

So of course they took.

The program from us in English, but they may speak a different language

that you share that, might be easy for you or even a family member.

We will make sure to link everything that we discussed here in the show

notes, the summit membership, and those details about the AIP Certified

Coach enrollment and directory.

Jamie, thank you so much for everything that you do to support

and connect this community.

Thanks for having me.

It was an honor to be here.

All right, everybody.

Thank you so much for listening to this very first quarterly

community update episode of the Autoimmune Wellness Podcast.

My hope is that conversations like these help you feel more connected,

not just to that information, but to the people, the research and

advocacy efforts that are shaping the autoimmune community right now.

Whether you choose to get involved directly or simply feel

just a little more oriented and supported, that connection matters.

I'll be back next time with a Kitchen Confidence episode where we will

get practical and grounded in the day-to-day of autoimmune wellness.

Until then, take care and I'll see you next time.