Briana Rachelle Banos
Sensitive Skin Advocate | Writer & Documentarian
Originally from South Florida, Briana grew up curious about all things creative – writing and professionally working as an entertainment artist (dance and aerial arts) for Royal Caribbean Productions.
In 2015, she succumbed to Topical Steroid Withdrawal, completely pivoting her life towards advocacy and reform. She used YouTube as a platform for education and humor, a space for catharsis that turned into a future calling card.
Between 2017 – 2022, she harnessed her former education and arts training, becoming a dance, theater, and journalism teacher for a middle/high school charter.
Feeling stagnant and misaligned with her life’s purpose, she quit her job and moved to Edinburgh, Scotland to pursue her Masters in Film Directing for Documentary work. She has two feature-length documentaries, Preventable (2019), which is the first ever film on the subject of TSW, and Still Preventable (2024), a sequel highlighting the continued medical neglect around this condition. Her dissertation project, Tethered, is a short doc following her fluctuations of living with chronic illness.
Briana is open to film projects intersecting the arts and medicine, skin, and embodiment of chronic illness, as well as anything that allows her to explore the beauty of Scotland and the stories it holds. She is also pursuing any avenues where her patient advocacy and expertise can be disseminated through creative storytelling, consultancy, workshops, lectures, or interviews.
In the fall, she will be applying for a PhD at the University of Edinburgh, qualitative research addressing resilience strategies needed to mitigate the comorbidities of living with a chronic skin condition utilizing film, patient engagement, and embodiment practices.
Current Projects:
Codex Labs video series (January – November 2025)
The series promotes the patient experiences living with eczema and a needed conversation surrounding Topical Steroid Withdrawal.
ITSAN TSW Awareness Resolution Campaign
UK TSW Advocacy – (June – December) Templates available for patients to use in order to effectively communicate our needs to specific elected officials.
Speaker at NFTS (June) – Lecture on working with organizations using film to advocate for medical conditions.
Upcoming Events:
Allergy and Free From Show (June) – Panel leader, discussing TSW and my most current documentary, Still Preventable.
NEA Expo (July) – Workshop leader disseminating resilience tools needed within the patient community, as well as heading the TSW patient circle
Briana has been featured on The Doctors Show, Thought Catalog, and the Healthy Skin Show. She has been on a number of podcasts, in health articles, as well as featured as a patient advocate for HealthUnion. Her documentary, Preventable, is endorsed by the National Eczema Association and ITSAN. Her newest documentary, Still Preventable, premiered November 2024.
She is currently working with Codex Labs on a video series surrounding patient voices, TSW, and the gut microbiome, as well as preparing for her PhD at the University of Edinburgh documenting the lived experience of TSW and eczema amongst young adults.
