Newsletter: October 2025

Greetings, public health PHANs! Welcome to the October 2025 newsletter! A lot is happening but we've got the rundown for you.

If you know of events or organizations that may be of interest to our subscribers, please email us at media@phan.community!

Happy halloween from everyone at PHAN!

PHAN CEO Tarz Ludwigsen's kids dressed up as a wild roller-coaster ride!

PHAN & air support project co-hosting A twitter space every other thursday

We are delighted to regularly co-host a Twitter Space with the Melissa Smallwood and Sarah Masih from Air Support Project, every other Thursday at 5 pm PT / 8 pm ET. Last night we had a terrific conversation with Kyle Stevens of Clean AirAir free of pollutants, including viruses, bacteria, and harmful particles. Events, a COVID-aware events organizing business in the Seattle, WA, area; and Nia Maxwell, founder of the Fiddler's Dream Coffeehouse in Phoenix, AZ,, a non-profit organization and venue space incorporated in 1987 that requires masks of all attendees and provides free KN95 earloop masks.

Our next Space will take place on Thursday, November 13. Stay tuned to our social media platforms and our weekly newsletters for information on upcoming topics and guests. All Spaces are recorded and can be found on our Twitter feed, or from Air Support Project's Twitter Spaces page.

OCTOBER has been national indoor air quality month: how you can be an advocate

October has been designated as National Indoor Air Quality Month by the American Lung Association, with a goal of increasing awareness of the importance of clean indoor air. We can all be advocates for healthier indoor air with friends, family, community, workplaces, and schools.

Some ideas:

Or you can get creative about other actions that will get folks curious about the indoor air we spend 90% of our days in. Tag us on your social media with your photos!

Stories from our blog

PHAN friend Nancy Park wrote a touching story about how the introduction of the polio vaccine changed life in the US for kids and their families. Her mother was a nurse and Nancy remembers her mother crying when the polio vaccine was first introduced. Her story reminds us that vaccines are a gift and we need to keep fighting for them to be available to everyone who wants them.

We also have a story about a recent conversation we had with Liesl McConchie, a parent, teacher, and advocate for clean airAir free of pollutants, including viruses, bacteria, and harmful particles. in schools. Her organization, Clean AirAir free of pollutants, including viruses, bacteria, and harmful particles. Allies, is working for better enforcement of existing regulations for air quality in schools.

Find your local air quality and wastewater data with our Airaware website widget

We're excited to present our new “AirAware” widget on our website that shows local air quality and wastewater statistics for COVID, RSV, and influenza in the US. The widget appears in the lower-right corner of every page of the website and will expand when you click on it, to show your local air quality index (AQI)A system for reporting the quality of outdoor air and its health impact. information and the local wastewater statistics, with links to the original information sources.

We've also made this widget open-source on GitHub, linked in the widget. The GitHub repository has a readme file with instructions on how to install it on your own website. We believe scientific information should be made open and freely available, and we're excited to add to the open-source healthy-air-data community.

The beta version of our “CARE” SMART

chat-bot is now available!

We're also excited to present the beta version of our new “CARE” COVID and Long COVIDPersistent and new symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. More AI/LLM “chatbot”! This chatbot is just for COVID and Long COVIDPersistent and new symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. More information, and it is tightly constrained to a self-contained database of several thousand verified research papers. You can ask it any kind of question about COVID or Long COVIDPersistent and new symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. More, with any degree of knowledge from simple to highly technical. CARE will search the research papers and articles, then return answers in the level of language the question was in. It will also provide citations to the relevant papers that you'll be able to read in a separate frame. You can then ask it to restate the answer in simpler terms or in more technical language, or click on suggested follow-up questions, or ask a new question.

This chatbot also can optionally search for anecdotal data on Reddit, Bluesky, and Twitter. Anecdotal material will be clearly marked as such and will also provide links to the original posts.

Some sample questions you can ask CARE:

We're very excited about the potential of this tool. We think this could be a real asset towards public health communications in the U.S. and ultimately globally. CARE is currently just for English-language questions and responses, but we're hoping to make it multi-lingual in the future.

Our website's Events page has all the upcoming events – and you can even subscribe to it and add it to your calendar app!

Every Saturday evening: PandemicA global outbreak of a disease. Pals meetings on Zoom. Every Saturday at 5 pm PT/8 pm ET, the PandemicA global outbreak of a disease. Collaborative hosts a Zoom call that is inclusive and welcoming to all COVID-conscious folks. They offer several breakout rooms based on age groups, life situations, special interests, or just for general hanging out. Check their Google Document the day of the call for that week's Zoom link.

Every Monday & Sunday: Rising Hope meetings on Zoom. Rising Hope is a community of COVID-conscious folks that meet Monday evenings, plus Sunday mornings for church services. Contact them via Reddit.

Every Monday & Thursday: The World Health Network hosts a “WHN Café Call”, a virtual open space to meet others, welcome newcomers, and connect across teams. Join us Mondays and Thursdays at 10 am PT/1 pm ET in #1-general-dailycall on Slack. Community care starts with conversation. Join their Slack Workspace.

Every Day: World Health Network meetings. The World Health Network is a public health non-profit organization that creates communities around public health issues with daily meetings on various campaigns and public health issues. Check out their calendar to see if one of them fits your interests.

October 31, 2025: State of Global Air 2025: Exploring Trends in Air Quality and Health Impacts Around the World. Join the Health Effects Institute’s State of Global Air initiative for an informative webinar on the State of Global Air 2025 report (releasing on October 23, 2025). The State of Global Air report and interactive website bring into one place a comprehensive analysis of the levels and trends in air quality and health for every country in the world.

October 31, 2025: IACC Long COVIDPersistent and new symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. More Case Competition. The 2025 IACC Long COVIDPersistent and new symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. More Case Competition takes place at Tauber Auditorium, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, 701 Tappan Ave, Ann Arbor MI 48109. It's free and they also have a virtual attendance option.

November 6, 2025: Safer Shared Air: Making the Invisible Visible Conference 2025.

This full-day conference organized by the Safer Air Project will take place at the Australian Parliament House in Canberra, and online. The event will highlight why improving IAQ matters, examine the science and the evidence for mandating IAQ performance standards, and set out how we can make indoor air safer for everyone to breathe. This conference will bring together people with lived experience, advocates, policymakers, clinicians, scientists, and built-environment and industry leaders to highlight why IAQ must be recognized as a foundation for health, equity, and inclusion. Attendance is free, or you can support their work with a contribution when reserving a ticket.

November 7, 2025: Long COVIDPersistent and new symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. More Defense forum from Mask Together America. This online forum will bring together advocates and experts on Long COVIDPersistent and new symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. More to discuss how we can all protect ourselves from getting Long COVIDPersistent and new symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. More and how we can help those who've been affected by it. Guest speakers will include:

November 14, 2025: PolyBio Fall 2025 Long COVIDPersistent and new symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. More Symposium. Join PolyBio for an all-day webinar starting at 8 am PT / 11 am ET, with presentations on the latest research and findings from PolyBio-supported researchers. Institutions represented include Harvard Medical School, University of Pennsylvania, and University of California at San Francisco.

November 18, 2025: The Go Green Initiative organization (based in the San Francisco Bay Area in Pleasanton, CA) will host a webinar on "Practical IAQ Management Strategies for Tribal Schools" at 11am PT/2pm ET. The featured speaker will be Gloria Hale, Former Educator, Navajo Nation. Panelists will include: James Parsons, PMP, Environmental Specialist, Environmental Protection Service, Air Quality Division, Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma; and Vincent Mays, Principal, Low Mountain BIE, Navajo Nation. This webinar is part of their series on “IAQ in Schools”, and their website has recordings of previous webinars.

November 19-20, 2025: 3rd International Long COVIDPersistent and new symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. More Conference, in Boston, MA. The event will be both in-person and online. This conference aims to raise awareness, clarify misconceptions, promote understanding, and stimulate discussion among healthcare professionals, investigators, policymakers, and community representatives on the clinical manifestations, management, plausible preventive and therapeutic options, and public health challenges related to Long COVIDPersistent and new symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. More (or post-acute sequelae of COVID-19A disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, leading to respiratory illness. (PASC)).

Dr. Lindsay Briggs, a professor of public health at California State University-Chico, was recently featured on the social media accounts for Mask Together America. She's not only a friend of PHAN but also a terrific advocate for masking in the classroom: she requests that all of her students mask in class, and she always keeps masks on hand for those who need them. Her post-graduate studies focused on the societal response to the HIV/AIDS crisis, which has made her well aware of the similarities and difference between that time and our current COVID/Long COVID crisis. We'll have her as a guest in one of our first set of podcast episodes and we're looking forward to introducing her to the PHAN community.

Dr Lindsay Briggs sitting in a chair with a pretty pink mask and holding a box showing the COVID vaccine she just received.

We're making a podcast! As public health institutions are gutted and mainstream platforms increasingly amplify and distribute disinformation, we believe there's a critical need for honest, science-based voices. Our podcast aims to fill that vacuum. We’ll be talking with people fighting COVID and vaccine disinformation, Long COVIDPersistent and new symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. More patients, mutual aid organizers distributing masks and filters, experts in air quality and masking, researchers developing treatments, and public health professionals tracking airborne threats.

We’re excited to step into this new space because someone has to! Stay tuned, and if you have ideas for episode themes or guests, reach out to us at media@phan.community.

October 7, 2025: Six previous surgeons general wrote a joint opinion piece in the Washington Post saying that RFK Jr's actions are endangering the health of the country.

October 13, 2025: Key similarities and differences between HIV/AIDS and COVID/Long COVID. A group of researchers reviews the extensive scientific evidence showing that SARS-CoV-2The virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. infections result in immune cell depletion, dysfunction, and exhaustion, with impacts on several immune system cell types.

October 14, 2025: The Sick Times reports that the CDC has stopped updating their national infectious-diseases trends page. They refer readers to the terrific Outbreak Outlook blog from epidemiologist Caitlin Rivers, with state by state disease surveillance of COVID-19A disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, leading to respiratory illness., influenza and RSV amid federal public health cuts.

October 16, 2025: A group of physicians, occupational disease researchers, and other healthcare advocates are urging WHO to make N95/FFP2-3 respirators the standard for healthcare, with clear allowances for “off-ramps.” They're asking for anyone who supports this standard to sign their petition by the end of day today, October 31. The group of physicians and researchers created a letter with references to the WHO. This group arose from the Unpolitics Summer 2025 Conference:

October 21, 2025: The New England Journal of Medicine and CIDRAP at the University of Minnesota will begin publishing “public health alerts” in the coming month to replace the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

October 22, 2025: The COVID inquiry in the UK has revealed that NHS doctors were instructed not to officially diagnose any children with Long COVIDPersistent and new symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. More, as the NHS believed giving children that label could harm them, and they generally assumed Long COVIDPersistent and new symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. More only affected adults. Because of this, the UK has very little reliable data on how many children are affected by Long COVIDPersistent and new symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. More, although a little over 70,000 kids have reported symptoms of Long COVIDPersistent and new symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. More after a second infection. The Long COVIDPersistent and new symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. More Kids organization supports around 11,000 families in the UK who have kids affected by Long COVIDPersistent and new symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. More.

October 23, 2025: The US Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) reports that avian flu detections in wild birds have spiked in the US.

October 27, 2025: A new study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases shows COVID reinfectionBecoming infected again after recovering from an earlier infection. in kids more than doubles the risk of them developing Long COVIDPersistent and new symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. More.

October 27, 2025: The entire support staff for ACIP has been laid off, and the ACIP meeting normally set for October has been indefinitely postponed, meaning next year's vaccine recommendations may not happen.

October 29, 2025: CBC reporter Adam Walsh spoke with attendees at the 3rd Canadian Symposium on Long COVIDPersistent and new symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. More in Newfoundland, where doctors explain that COVID is not over, people are still getting COVID, and it's continuing to create new cases of Long COVIDPersistent and new symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. More.

October 30, 2025: A new study by investigators at Mass General Brigham published in Obstetrics and Gynecology, found that children born to mothers who had COVID-19A disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, leading to respiratory illness. while pregnant face an elevated risk of developmental disorders by the time they turn 3 years old, including speech delays, autism, motor disorders, and other developmental delays.

October 30, 2025: A scoping review from the CDC published on October 29th found that avian flu cases in humans can be asymptomatic and the virus likely spreads among people.

October 30, 2025: Avian flu has been detected in house mice in Grant County in Washington state.

October 31, 2025: A new study shows that COVID accelerates the brain's aging process.

November 2025: An overview of clinical presentation and management of long COVIDPersistent and new symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. More from researchers at the University of Manitoba reports that around 10% of all people who get a COVID infection will experience incomplete recovery and severe, long-term health complications.

gotta laugh!

We're seeking volunteers!

If you'd like to help make a world that supports folks being COVID-conscious, where anyone can find the Long COVIDPersistent and new symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. More healthcare they need, and where everyone has access to clean indoor air, we want you! We're ramping up quickly and would love to have you on our team. We're looking for volunteers in the following areas:

GENERAL: project manager, volunteer coordinator

SAFER: people who can call and vet businesses and organizations; people who can organize spreadsheets, look up URLs and find addresses, locations, download images, etc.; website/Wordpress developers

CARE: fullstack developers, AI (Deepseek, LLM trainers, etc), researchers, NLP experts, psychiatrists

AIRWISE: game developers (Unity preferred) who understand physics engines

COMMUNICATIONS: social media, graphic designers, writers, storytellers, fundraisers, photographers, videographers, news curators

If you match any of those needs, fill out our contact form on our website and one of us will get back to you as soon as we can. If you have other skills or experience that you think might help our work, go ahead and fill out our form, and we'll find a way for you to help!

Thank you to everyone who's considering volunteering with us–we really appreciate it!

We NEED YOUR SUPPORT!

If you're able to donate to make it possible for us to create tools that will benefit folks around the world and then let people know about those tools, we will gladly accept your donation.

You can also help support us by following us on social media and sharing our posts, on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. When you follow us, like, share, and reply to our posts, and share our posts, it all adds up to help increase our visibility.