A champion of parents with chronic health conditions,
Hilary’s writing and classes provide parents with age-appropriate strategies, tools, and scripts for talking to their children about their illness, hospitalizations, medical emergencies, heritable conditions, and much more.
As a mother with two diseases, Hilary draws on her own experience as well as more than 100 hours of interviews with parents, child psychologists, teachers, and medical professionals. Hilary has worked as an author and editor for Oxford and Cambridge University Presses, Pearson, and National Geographic, and written for Slate and Hemispheres. She is also an adult education expert and served for many years as the Associate Vice Chancellor of Adult Education for the City Colleges of Chicago. She is currently finishing the book The Art of Parenting While Sick.
She is the patient co-chair of the severe asthma arm of the European Respiratory Society and leads frequent trainings to help families plan for medical emergencies.
She holds a BA in Spanish, Italian, and Philosophy from Kenyon College and an MA in Linguistics from the University of Florida. She is the Director of the Angers Literary Festival and lives in the Loire Valley in France with her husband and son.
📰 In the news
Cortisol is actually good for you! I wrote this article for Slate on the alarming social media trend of people worrying their cortisol is too high (spoiler: it almost never is!) I was grateful to Shana for so bravely sharing her story.
Parenting with an adrenal disease. In this podcast with Vanessa O’Rourke at the National Adrenal Diseases Foundation, we talk about the life skills parents need to manage multiple conditions and how foundations and individuals are filling the gaps of what medical professionals don’t have time to provide.
🎧Listen to “I have a clear vision everything can be fine”
Invisible struggles. In this podcast with Aaron DeVries, The Inclusive Dad, we discuss the realities of parenting with a chronic condition, the lack of available resources, and why I’m writing a book to meet that need.
🎧Listen to Guilt, Grace, and Growth: What Parents with Chronic Illness Need to Hear
Life with severe asthma. I was delighted to co-chair an online summit with the European Lung Foundation for 440 participants from all around the world on common comorbidities, new medications on the horizon, and more.
🎥 Watch to 2025 Severe Asthma Conference: European Lung Foundation
Fairer, better respiratory care. I was proud to collaborate with the World Health Organization and the European Lung Foundation on this report, which highlights the significant impact of respiratory diseases across Europe and underscores the urgent need to make medication and care more equitable.
What is Addison’s? Allara is a telehealth care program for people with chronic hormonal, metabolic, and gynecological conditions. I am featured on their site as a patient navigating Addison’s Disease.
📖 Read Understanding Addison’s disease: Symptoms and early signs
Cortisol cocktails. These drinks are all the rage at the moment and in this piece for VeryWell Health, I talk about why they are mostly fancy Gatorade 🙂
📖 Read I Drank a “Cortisol Cocktail” Every Day for a Month—Here’s What Happened
Why we need support groups. I wrote this piece on everything I’ve learned from support groups and how essential they are to managing a health condition.
📖 Read Hilary’s Story: Why I Need Support Groups to Help Me Manage My Adrenal Insufficiency
Do families need to eat together? I was interviewed for a piece on Slate about what to do when chronic health conditions mean parents eat at different times than their children or partners.
📖 Read People Say It’s a Magic Trick for Raising Smart, Happy Kids. I Simply Can’t Do It.
The effects of prednisone. In this piece in the UK’s Daily Mail, I spoke about how prednisone can affect patients’ moods.
How can pharmacies be more accessible? In this piece on how pharmacies can better accommodate patients with disabilities, I talked about how they can provide resources to help families prepare for unexpected medical emergencies, such as teaching children how to call emergency services.
📖 Read Your Key Ability Around Disability
🗣️ Events
Coming soon
Global Allergy and Airways Patient Platform (GAAPP) podcast
I will speak with Tonya Winders, President of GAAPP, about severe asthma, educating patients and clinicians on steroid use, and more.
Past
October 2025, European Respiratory Society (ERS) Congress Amsterdam, Netherlands
Chaired the session: “Family burden—the forgotten caregivers?”
April 2025, ERS National Leads and Rising Stars Workshop Amsterdam, Netherlands
Led a session on patient perspectives on patient-reported outcome measurement tools and how they can be improved.
April 2024, Severe Asthma Summit, Copenhagen, Denmark
Spoke on a panel alongside representatives from the National Institute of Health (NIH) from the United States and the National Health Service (NHS) from the United Kingdom.
April 2024, ERS Rising Star Researcher Workshop, Lausanne, Switzerland
Trained clinicians on how to collaborate with patients on research.
HILARY HODGE 