Founder

Dielle Lundberg (she/her or ze/hir) is a public health data analyst and storyteller based in Seattle, Washington. She is the founder and lead writer of Ableism & Healthcare Now, an independent research and analysis project about how structural ableism shapes healthcare and public health.

Dielle completed an MPH at Boston University School of Public Health in 2019. She started reflecting on the need for Ableism & Healthcare Now after undertaking a year and a half of a PhD program at the University of Washington School of Public Health. She wrote about the experiences of inaccessibility she faced as a disabled PhD student in an essay series entitled “Mad at/in Health Education”.

Despite the lack of structural support for disabled, neurodivergent, and mad people in public health, she was often told that her scholarship and advocacy on structural ableism was critically needed. Leaving behind the PhD program, she was keenly aware that this decision represented the loss of yet another disabled scholar focused on structural ableism in these institutions and systems.

In July 2025, Dielle founded Ableism & Healthcare Now as a platform to continue the research and analysis that she had started as a disabled person in public health. She launched this project as the lead writer, with the vision of involving colleagues and other researchers as contributors once the readership grows. She deliberately designed the project to circumvent many of the structural barriers imposed on disabled scholars by academic research institutions.

Dielle is a white, queer, transfeminine person who is disabled, mad, and neurodivergent. Her perspectives on ableism are informed by her experiences as a psychiatrized person (bipolar disorder, PTSD, addiction), with physical disability (Long Covid, chronic pain, moves with walking sticks), and as an autistic person with ADHD (adult discovery/diagnosis).

More information about Dielle and her work is available on her website.