Julie Loffredi is a journalist, patient ambassador, and one of the nation's leading patient voices in dry eye research and education. A former television news reporter and on-air spokesperson, Julie has appeared on TODAY, Good Morning America, CNN, and Fox, bringing the same instinct for asking the right questions to a disease that once upended her own life: chronic dry eye.
Julie's path into dry eye advocacy began not in a newsroom, but in an exam chair. Diagnosed with severe dry eye disease and meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD), and later navigating autoimmune issues, allergies, chronic blurriness, she spent months moving between specialists and treatments in search of real relief. What she found along the way wasn't just a personal diagnosis — it was a pattern. Patients everywhere were navigating the same confusion, often with little guidance and even less research built around their actual experience.
That realization reshaped her work. Rather than simply reporting on health as a journalist, Julie became an active participant in the science and support systems surrounding her own condition — bridging the gap between clinical research and the patients living with its results.
Today, Julie serves as a founding board member and volunteer of the Dry Eye Society of the Americas, contributing to the organization's research, education, and advocacy efforts on behalf of patients across the country. She is collaborating with the New England School of Optometry on a dry eye certification program for optometrists, launching in 2027, designed to bring the patient perspective directly into provider training. She is also leading research for an upcoming dry eye report centered entirely on the patient experience — work grounded in the belief that patient-reported outcomes deserve the same rigor as clinical data.
As a patient ambassador, Julie shares what she learns through a dry eye column and digital podcast where she translates research and treatment developments into guidance patients can actually use. Her advocacy extends into innovation as well: she holds a provisional patent for a transport solution for eye drops, developed to solve problem she encountered firsthand as a patient and donates the invention to dry eye clinics.
Julie lives in the New York City area, where she continues to report, research, and advocate — building the resources, community, and clinical partnerships she wishes had existed when her own journey with dry eye began.