Speaking

Speaking and Keynotes

Dr. Andrew Shulman speaks at conferences, hospitals, universities, medical education programs, parent and patient organizations, podcasts, panels, and literary events. He is a pediatric rheumatologist and physician-scientist who has spent his career caring for children and teens with complex pain and has lived most of his life with a chronic pain condition.

That combination of education, clinical practice, and lived experience is what he brings to the stage. He explains why a child’s pain can be real even when tests are clean and how doctors, parents, and patients can do better than dismiss what they cannot immediately explain. His aim is always the same: to make difficult medical ideas clear without oversimplifying them.

Speaking Topics

Pediatric Chronic Pain

Children and teens with chronic pain often live between two hard facts: the pain is real, and the cause is not obvious. He speaks to the impact of chronic pain on school, sports, friendships, family life, and a young person’s sense of self, and explains why careful listening is so often the first step toward better care.

Pain Science

Pain is not a simple alarm bell. It is shaped by the body, the brain, and the nervous system, as well as by memory, emotion, and context. For both medical and general audiences, he makes sense of ideas such as sensitization, pain amplification, and the mind-body relationship without watering them down.

Pediatric Rheumatology

Drawing on his clinical practice, he explores juvenile arthritis, lupus, juvenile dermatomyositis, vasculitis, and the autoinflammatory and autoimmune conditions that bring children and families into specialty care, as well as how these diseases are diagnosed and treated and what it means to live with them over time.

Pain Amplification Syndromes and CRPS

Pain amplification syndromes and complex regional pain syndrome are frightening precisely because they do not behave the way families expect pain to. Dr. Shulman illuminates how the nervous system can become oversensitive, why pain can outlast the injury that started it, and how families move from fear toward understanding and a plan.

Dysautonomia, POTS, and Long COVID

Dysautonomia, POTS, Long COVID, and other post-viral illnesses can upend a young person’s life, causing dizziness, fatigue, brain fog, pain, and exhaustion after exertion, even when standard testing appears unremarkable. He walks through how these conditions present, how they overlap with patterns long familiar in pediatric rheumatology, and why they deserve to be taken seriously.

Medical Uncertainty

Some of medicine’s most important conversations happen when answers are incomplete: normal test results, unexplained symptoms, or a diagnosis that never fully resolves. He speaks about caring for patients whose symptoms are real but hard to measure, and about what medicine owes them in the meantime.

Narrative Medicine and Medical Humanities

Stories shape how illness is understood. In talks on narrative medicine and the medical humanities, Dr. Shulman examines what it means to be believed, how doctors and patients communicate about pain, and why listening remains one of the most powerful tools a clinician has in treating patients.

Chronic Illness and Resilience

When medicine cannot offer a cure, the question shifts: how does a person go on to build a full life anyway? He addresses chronic illness and resilience, movement and endurance, and the search for a good life when a cure isn’t available, a question he takes both personally and professionally.

Audiences

Dr. Shulman’s presentations are well suited to medical conferences, hospital grand rounds, universities and medical schools, parent education programs, patient advocacy organizations, chronic pain and post-viral illness communities, medical humanities programs, book festivals, media engagements, and public events. He tailors each presentation to the listeners, whether they are physicians, parents, patients, students, journalists, or the general public.

Speaking Style

His style is clear, thoughtful, and grounded in science and humanity. He translates complex medical topics into plain language while preserving the depth that an expert audience expects. He is as comfortable in grand rounds as in a conversation about a book.

Speaking Themes

Pediatric chronic pain

Pain science

Pediatric rheumatology

Pain amplification syndromes

Complex regional pain syndrome

Dysautonomia and POTS

Long COVID and post-viral illness

Medical uncertainty

Narrative medicine and medical humanities

Chronic illness and resilience

Parent education

Invitations

To invite Dr. Andrew Shulman to speak at your conference, hospital, university, medical education program, parent event, patient advocacy gathering, podcast, panel, or literary program, please use the contact form.

Speaking Engagements

Dr. Shulman’s speaking engagements include a cross-section of
general, professional, and academic audiences.

Patient and Public Audiences

2025

Cure JM Foundation Regional Family Day, Southern California

Unlocking the benefits of multidisciplinary care

2022

Cure JM Foundation Town Hall

Pain, mental health, and juvenile myositis

2013

National Juvenile Arthritis Conference, Anaheim

Professional and Academic Audiences

2024

CHOC and UC Irvine Neurology Professor Rounds

2015

American Academy of Pediatrics, Orange County Chapter

The top 5 things pediatricians need to know about rheumatic diseases

Dr. Shulman has also presented in academic and clinical settings, including hospital grand rounds and teaching lectures for physicians, residents, and medical trainees.

For interviews, podcasts, expert commentary, or press requests, please visit the Media page.