Lyme Disease Awareness & AdvocacyTick Boot Camp is a Lyme disease awareness and advocacy platform dedicated to education, storytelling, community, and action.
Through the Tick Boot Camp Podcast, our digital content, and our advocacy efforts in New York City and beyond, we help people better understand tick-borne illness while amplifying the voices of patients, doctors, researchers, and advocates.
What began as a mission to validate the suffering of those affected by Lyme disease has grown into a broader movement focused on awareness, education, visibility, and hope.
Tick Boot Camp conducts both virtual podcast interviews and in-person studio interviews onsite, creating space for meaningful conversations that help liberate people from suffering through community, knowledge, and belief that healing is possible.
These moments reflect the expansion of Lyme disease awareness into culture, media, publishing, research, government, and public conversation.
On September 22, 2026, Tick Boot Camp joined the Lyme disease community in Central Park for a major awareness event presented by Music for Action and featuring performances by Young the Giant and St. Lucia.
The event brought Lyme disease awareness into a highly visible public setting, connecting music, advocacy, patient stories, and community in the heart of New York City.
For Tick Boot Camp, events like this demonstrate how Lyme disease awareness can reach far beyond traditional medical conferences and patient spaces. Music and culture can introduce the issue to new audiences, create conversations, and remind people affected by Lyme disease that they are part of a much larger community.
Read more: Music for Action Brings Lyme Disease Awareness to Central Park with Young the Giant & St. Lucia
On September 14, 2026, Tick Boot Camp co-founders Matt Sabatello and Rich Johannesen joined the Lyme disease community at Gotham Hall in New York City for Project Lyme’s 10th Anniversary Gala.
The evening brought together researchers, physicians, nonprofit leaders, advocates, patients, entrepreneurs, families, and longtime members of the Lyme disease community to celebrate a decade of advocacy, patient support, research, education, and progress.
The gala highlighted the importance of collaboration across the Lyme community—from scientific research and diagnostics to treatment access, prevention, storytelling, technology, policy, and patient support.
For Tick Boot Camp, the night reinforced a message that runs through our work: meaningful progress happens when patients, doctors, researchers, advocates, and organizations have opportunities to connect and work together.
Read more: Project Lyme Celebrates 10 Years of Lyme Disease Advocacy, Research and Community
On August 29, 2026, Tick Boot Camp coordinated a day of tick dragging, field research, educational video production, documentary filming, and in-person podcast interviews across Coram and Rocky Point on Long Island.
Working alongside tick-borne disease researcher Monica Cipriani, Dr. Andre Ene, filmmaker Reece Robinson, and members of the production team, Tick Boot Camp helped document how quickly ticks can be encountered in ordinary Long Island environments.
The field work found hundreds of tiny larval ticks, multiple concentrated clusters commonly called “tick bombs,” lone star ticks, blacklegged ticks, and an invasive Asian longhorned tick at a working farm.
The project turned real-world field research into practical public education about tick exposure, Lyme disease, alpha-gal syndrome, emerging tick threats, prevention, and the importance of continued surveillance.
On June 23, 2026, Tick Boot Camp joined patients, advocates, clinicians, journalists, filmmakers, artists, and members of the Lyme disease community in Brooklyn for LymeLnk’s Art as Witness exhibition.
The event used art, film, journalism, medicine, and lived experience to give visibility to an illness that is often difficult for others to see or understand.
For patients who have experienced dismissal, disbelief, or years of uncertainty, making invisible illness visible can itself be a form of validation. The exhibition created space for those experiences while also bringing together different parts of the Lyme disease community around awareness, education, and change.
On June 10, 2026, Tick Boot Camp co-founders Matt Sabatello and Rich Johannesen attended the New York City launch of Amy Kurtz’s book But You Look Fine.
Amy’s work explores Lyme disease recovery, chronic illness, emotional healing, and what she calls Medical Trauma Brain—the lasting impact that years of illness, uncertainty, medical dismissal, and survival mode can have even as physical healing moves forward.
The event reflected the growing role of storytelling in Lyme disease advocacy. Personal stories can validate patients, help families better understand chronic illness, and bring experiences that are often hidden into the public conversation.
Tick Boot Camp later continued that conversation with Amy through an in-person studio interview focused on healing beyond the physical symptoms of Lyme disease.
Tick Boot Camp partnered with Lyme Warrior’s 10th Anniversary Gala in Connecticut, bringing together Lyme patients, advocates, researchers, clinicians, authors, families, and friends for a night of laughter, science, music, and hope.
The evening honored ten years of Lyme Warrior advocacy and highlighted the strength of the Lyme disease community. The event featured leading Lyme voices, researchers, advocates, clinicians, nonprofit leaders, patients, and families united around awareness, education, support, and hope for healing.
Lyme Warrior Founder and CEO Lauren Lovejoy—a good friend of Tick Boot Camp—was honored for building an organization rooted in patient support, community care, awareness, and hope.
Tick Boot Camp was proud to partner with Lyme Warrior by photographing the gala, recording event coverage, and helping capture memories from a meaningful night for the Lyme disease community. Many of the researchers, artists, advocates, and clinicians who made the evening so meaningful have shared their stories and expertise with the Tick Boot Camp community over the years, making the gala feel like a gathering of extended Lyme community family.
The gala featured powerful keynote discussions, Lyme research conversations, community storytelling, a Lyme-themed game show, live music, and moments of laughter and connection that reflected the resilience of the Lyme disease community.
Read more: Lyme Warrior 10th Anniversary Gala: A Night of Hope, Science, Laughter, and Community
Tick Boot Camp co-founders Matt Sabatello and Rich Johannesen led the featured author panel discussion at Project Lyme’s inaugural Stories That Heal: Author Series in New York City—bringing together leading Lyme voices, advocates, researchers, patients, and caregivers for one of the most meaningful conversations in the Lyme disease space.
This was not just a storytelling event. It was a forward-moving discussion focused on real progress in Lyme disease understanding and treatment.
Panelists shared insights on evolving Lyme testing and diagnostic challenges, emerging herbal treatment research, and advanced pharmaceutical approaches including Dapsone protocols. The conversation also explored the broader impact of chronic infection on the body, including neurological involvement and cognitive decline.
In a powerful moment during the discussion, new research insights were shared finding that targeted Lyme disease treatment played a role in reversing neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s and dementia—highlighting just how far the science and clinical thinking around Lyme disease has come.
What made this event especially meaningful was the unity behind it. Lyme disease organizations and voices that have often worked in parallel came together in one room aligned in purpose: help patients, advance understanding, and create hope.
For Tick Boot Camp, leading this conversation reflects our mission—to bridge patients, doctors, and researchers while bringing the most important insights in Lyme disease directly to the community.
Tick Boot Camp attended the launch of Resilient Hope: A Memoir Of Life With Chronic Illness by Nicole O’Donnell in Manhattan, where approximately 1,000 people gathered for a powerful night of storytelling, visibility, and community.
Resilient Hope: A Memoir Of Life With Chronic Illness shares Nicole’s personal journey navigating chronic illness, including Lyme disease, while also amplifying the voices of others facing similar challenges.
The event was more than a book launch. It was a defining moment for Lyme disease awareness, with themes that deeply resonate across the community, including misdiagnosis, medical dismissal, invisible symptoms, and the emotional toll of not being believed.
One of the most powerful aspects of Resilient Hope is that it is not just Nicole’s story. It is also a collective story of Lyme disease resilience, featuring voices across the community—including Tick Boot Camp co-founder Matt Sabatello.
Following the event, we continued the conversation with Nicole O’Donnell through an in-person interview in the Tick Boot Camp studio, further reflecting our commitment to amplifying important voices.
Read more: Lyme Disease Community Shows Strength at Resilient Hope Book Launch in Manhattan
Matt and Rich from Tick Boot Camp took the runway at New York Fashion Week as part of Project Lab Coat, a groundbreaking event that brought Lyme disease awareness to one of the world’s most influential cultural stages.
Project Lab Coat united celebrities, doctors, researchers, advocates, and patients to highlight the urgent need for Lyme disease research, treatment, and recognition. The event demonstrated how fashion can serve as a powerful platform to elevate awareness for one of the fastest-growing vector-borne illnesses in the world.
Proceeds from the event supported leading Lyme-focused organizations including Project Lyme, Global Lyme Alliance (GLA), and LymeLight Foundation—friends and partners of Tick Boot Camp—who are working to fund research, support patients, and drive meaningful progress in the fight against Lyme disease.
For Tick Boot Camp, walking the runway was about representing the Lyme community—amplifying voices, validating experiences, and helping push awareness into the mainstream.
Tick Boot Camp has proudly served as the official podcast partner for the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS), a nonprofit, international, multi-disciplinary medical society dedicated to the diagnosis and appropriate treatment of Lyme and its associated diseases.
Over the past three annual ILADS conferences, Tick Boot Camp has conducted extensive on-site interviews with leading Lyme-literate doctors, researchers, and medical professionals from around the world—capturing cutting-edge insights and bringing them directly to the Lyme community.
Across the most recent conferences alone, we have interviewed well over 150 experts, helping bridge the gap between patients and the latest developments in Lyme disease diagnosis, treatment, and research.
At the most recent ILADS conference, Tick Boot Camp co-founder Rich also served as Master of Ceremonies (MC) for the ILADS Gala—further strengthening our role within the Lyme disease advocacy and medical community.
Read more / tune in: LIVE from ILADS Conference Interviews
In May 2022, Tick Boot Camp helped support a major milestone in local Lyme disease advocacy when Councilwoman Jane Bonner sponsored a proclamation declaring May as Lyme Disease Awareness Month in the Town of Brookhaven.
View Resolution 2022-412 (Lyme Disease Awareness Month Proclamation) from the Town of Brookhaven.
Tick Boot Camp continues to grow as a leading voice in Lyme disease awareness—bridging patients, science, storytelling, and advocacy while helping people take meaningful steps toward healing.