Help Bring NIMA to the SXSW 2027 Stage

NIMA is up for a panel at SXSW 2027. Getting on that stage depends on public voting, which is where you come in. Community voting runs August 5 through August 23, and casting one takes about a minute.

The session is called "Just Don't Eat Gluten" Is Not a Celiac Care Plan. It exists because for most patients, the care plan stops at the diagnosis.

What the Panel Covers

Three people who see the gap from different angles are on the bill. A Division I athlete who has to fuel and travel on a competition schedule. A licensed therapist who works with patients on the anxiety that arrives alongside the diagnosis. A gastroenterologist who delivers those diagnoses.

Together they will work through what a diagnosis of celiac disease leaves out, and how patients, physicians, and dietitians can build portable gluten detection into a care plan that holds up at a wedding buffet, a hotel breakfast bar, or a shared kitchen at seven in the morning. Living with celiac disease takes more than a diagnosis and instructions to avoid gluten.

Why This Matters

A diagnosis hands you a rule. Avoid gluten, permanently, starting now. What it rarely hands you is a way to know whether the plate in front of you actually follows that rule.

So patients work it out alone. Hidden ingredients. Products that get reformulated without warning. Cross-contact from a shared fryer or a counter that was floured an hour earlier. Gluten also shows up in things that were never food, and almost nobody mentions that at the appointment.

Most people learn quickly what makes them sick. The exhausting part is everything after that, the quiet calculation running behind every meal, every invitation, every trip.

The Numbers Behind the Panel

We commissioned a national survey to put real figures on that burden. RedSky Strategy ran it in collaboration with Beyond Celiac, surveying more than 715 people across the US community of people with celiac disease. The results, published in February, were blunt.

• 54% feel isolated or excluded in social settings

• 71% avoid eating out at restaurants to lower their risk

• 55% give up visiting friends and family for meals

• 55% feel worn down by the constant mental load of tracking gluten

Every one of those numbers describes a life getting smaller. That is what a care plan costs when it ends at the word avoid.

How to Vote for NIMA for SXSW 2027

Voting is free, public, and takes about a minute.

1. Create a free SXSW PanelPicker account.

2. Open the panel page. 

3. Click Vote Up.

Community voting closes August 23 at 11:59pm PT. Votes are not the only factor, since SXSW evaluators and programming staff weigh in too, but the community number carries real weight.

One Vote, One More Seat at the Table

The gluten-free toolkit already works hard. Your physician and dietitian, careful label reading, knowing which certifications mean what, understanding where cross-contact happens. NIMA is the last step before the first bite, the layer you reach for when everything else still leaves you unsure.

A panel like this puts that conversation in front of the clinicians and dietitians who write care plans. If you want it in the room, vote before August 23. And if you are still deciding whether testing belongs in your own routine, here is how NIMA works.