Dr. Shanda McManus is an Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine and author of the forthcoming memoir Brother Epistles (June 2026).

 Dr. McManus bridges the worlds of medicine and storytelling. Her writing has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, and other literary and medical journals. A 2021 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, 2023 Baldwin For The Arts Fellow, and founding member of bookinc.org, a New Jersey writing collective, she is a proud literary citizen.

Through her Weatherproof newsletter and platform, Dr. McManus teaches individuals and communities how to protect themselves against the chronic stress of systemic inequities. Her work centers on seven pillars of weatherproofing—nutrition, movement, sleep, stress management, social connections, avoidance of risky substances, and spiritual/ancestral connections—as tools for resilience and longevity.

A powerful advocate for health equity, she educates medical and community audiences on weathering, narrative medicine, and how to dismantle health disparities.

As a faculty member at Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine, she champions the Human Dimension course, which teaches medical students to maintain their humanity and empathy throughout their training. Dr. McManus has taught students, residents, and faculty to incorporate narrative practices into medicine, practice cultural humility, and address bias in healthcare.

Her book, Brother Epistles, examines gun violence as a public health crisis through intimate letters to her brother Monir, who was killed in a drive-by shooting in North Philadelphia in 1992. Drawing on both personal grief and her two decades of clinical experience, the book explores the systemic factors that disproportionately affect young men in urban communities.

Dr. McManus received her B.A. in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania and her M.D. from Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University.