Melissa Schenkman, MPH, MSJ
Founder, YMyHealth
Melissa is an award-winning health and medical writer and journalist currently based in Atlanta, Georgia. She has a wealth of experience writing for professional and lay audiences, explaining complicated health and medical concepts using creative techniques.
She has a background in journalism, anthropology and human biology, medicine and public health. Melissa holds both a master’s degree in public health from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University and a master’s degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she received the Comer Scholarship in Health, Medical, and Environmental Reporting. She loves producing content and other products that educate and empower people about their health through the multiple platforms of journalism.
Melissa is responsible for the creation of YMyHealth – Healthcare Stories for Generation Y along with her co-founder, Andy Hullinger. In her multifaceted role with YMyHeatlh she is involved in everything from story idea generation, interviewing, and story production to outreach, mentoring, and business strategy.
A writer at heart, Melissa along with her phenomenal cowriters on the YMyHealth team, writes, reports, and edits stories featuring fellow millennial patients and traditional and complementary healthcare experts from around the United States. Simultaneously, she acts as an editor and a mentor to her fellow writers on the YMyHealth team and those who are guest contributors. Melissa creates, films, produces and edits all YMyHealth videos and medical animations. She was also responsible for the construction of the original YMyHealth websites, as well as the YMyHealth YouTube Channel, and YMyHealth social media sites. She also performs co-management of YMyHealth’s company strategy with Content Marketing Specialist and fellow Northwestern Medill Grad, Julie Woon, and co-manages YMyHealth’s social media outlets with multiple experts.
In her free time, Melissa enjoys long-distance running (she has completed the NYC and Marine Corps Marathons), Pilates with B The Method, yoga, and spending time in the kitchen creating new recipes.
The Story Behind YMyHealth
As the founder of YMyHealth, I have reported on and researched a variety of health and medical topics for years. In addition to my work as a graduate student, in which I earned both a master’s degree in public health from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University and a master’s degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, I have interviewed people from around the country in my professional life working with hospitals, universities, and nonprofits.
It was this very part of my career that I love so much, interviewing people, that sparked my idea for YMyHealth.
It all started in 2015 in Chicago and Evanston, Illinois, when I interviewed a fellow millennial who was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. What I learned then and still know to be true today, is that there is not a place where millennials can turn to for reliable health information that is tailored towards them or comes directly from experts who are the same age as us, facing many of the same challenges in daily life that we do.
That’s one of the reasons I created YMyHealth. I wanted to have a place where millennials could come for health information about prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, that provides answers relevant to the very questions our age group is asking.
In everything I create along with the YMyHealth Team, the aim is to give us the tools and knowledge to have conversations with our doctors, nurses, physician assistants, and other healthcare and complementary health professionals to make the most informed decisions that we can about our health. We are also dedicated to providing resources our fellow millennials can use to engage in healthy habits, like regular exercise, healthy eating, regular screening tests (when needed), and optimizing our mental health, as well as seek out expert care in these areas.
In all of these efforts, my goal is to help fellow millennials live their best lives by empowering them to make their health a priority even with a very busy schedule.
Hear More About How We Got Started
In my interview on The Millennial Nutritionist’s podcast with Illa Garcia, MS, RDN, I shared the story behind why I created YMyHealth, how I came up with the name for this company and community to educate and empower fellow millennials (ages 25-41) about their health, and the lack of healthcare resources for Generation Y.
Question 1: How did YMyHealth come about?
Question 2: Why is there not a lot educating people about health in our age group or in our generation?
Question 3: Where does the name YMyHealth come from?
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