Newsletter: September 2025

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

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

The United Nations “Healthy Indoor Air” event on Sept. 23rd, 2025, was a landmark event in the movement for clean indoor air, being the first clean indoor air event sponsored by the United Nations. Hundreds of experts, advocates, and policy-makers from around the world gathered together to affirm that healthy indoor air should be a guaranteed right for all, and to share information about successful projects. One project in particular that drew our attention was the Boston Public Schools project to install air monitors in every classroom and make that data publicly available. You can view a full recording of the UN Healthy Indoor Air event.

The organizers of the event have created a new organization, Air Club, representing a global coalition of champions of clean indoor air. Any individual can join and sign up for their email list. We encourage all PHAN supporters to join the Air Club email list.

The organizers have also launched the Global Pledge for Healthy Indoor Air, the first international effort to formally recognize clean indoor air as a basic human right essential to health and well-being. Organizations and governments can sign the pledge on the Air Club website. PHAN is delighted to be a signatory to the pledge and we're excited to promote the cause of clean indoor air even more, now as part of a global movement.

Another follow-up effort is the Global Commission on Healthy Indoor Air, which brings together clean-air experts, advocates, and policy-makers to push for policies that will improve clean airAir free of pollutants, including viruses, bacteria, and harmful particles. around the world.

PHAN & air support project co-hosting a twitter space on Thurs, October 2nd

We are so excited to again co-host a Twitter Space with the folks at Air Support Project! It's happening this Thursday, October 2nd, at 5 pm PT / 8 pm ET. We'll chat about the United Nations “Healthy Indoor Air” event, the Global Pledge for Healthy Indoor Air, media coverage of the event, and what the future of clean indoor air looks like.

Check out Air Support Project's press release about their new “Vello” low-cost high-quality flat pack air purifier project, and sign up for their mailing list for updates on when the device will be launched. You can also follow Air Support Project on all the social media platforms: Bluesky, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Mastodon.

let's go fashion masking!

We're all familiar with the tried and true white KN95 masks but many folks associate them with being in a hospital and just generally being staid and not very attractive. But have you considered making your mask an attractive accessory? Mask Together America, a nonprofit advocacy organization dedicated to making masking a normal part of everyday life, has published thousands of photographs on their social media platforms on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky and Twitter, with folks wearing all kinds of fun, colorful, and artistically decorated masks. The masks in their photos are generally N95 or equivalent but so much more eye-pleasing than the regular white N95s. Fashionable masks can become a beautiful accessory to your look.

You can get fashion N95 masks from several vendors, and one we can whole-heartedly recommend is WellBefore. We are not affiliated with them or sponsored by them in any way, but it's a great company that's partnered with us in the past to provide us with over 10,000 masks that we distributed to local clean-air clubs in the northeast U.S. Their masks are high-quality and low-cost and come in a variety of styles and colors.

California clean airAir free of pollutants, including viruses, bacteria, and harmful particles. Day, October 1st!

California Clean AirAir free of pollutants, including viruses, bacteria, and harmful particles. Day is October 1st and we're encouraging all PHAN supporters, especially those in California but everywhere else too, to take part in any local activities or events to encourage folks to think about clean airAir free of pollutants, including viruses, bacteria, and harmful particles. more. You can volunteer with or donate to your local clean airAir free of pollutants, including viruses, bacteria, and harmful particles. club or mask bloc, get some extra masks to give away or put in your local Little Free Library box, get a CO2 monitor and get familiar with what the air quality is like in various indoor spaces, or ask about your school’s or workplace’s HVAC system and find out what their CADR (clean airAir free of pollutants, including viruses, bacteria, and harmful particles. deliver rate) is. Or you can think of anything else 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 for California Clean AirAir free of pollutants, including viruses, bacteria, and harmful particles. Day!

Find your local air quality and wastewater data with our new 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. This information is based on your individual IP address, which is sometimes not as specific to your area as we might like, but for most situations, the IP address will match your location.

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 “clear”

SMART chat-bot is now available!

We're also excited to present the beta version of our new “CLEAR” COVID and Long COVIDPersistent symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. AI/LLM “chatbot”! This chatbot is just for COVID and Long COVIDPersistent symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. information and is tightly constrained to give you only verified scientific information. This chatbot is linked to several thousand verified research papers. It will not search the entire web but instead will constrain its search to the papers we've uploaded to its database. You can ask it any kind of question about COVID or Long COVIDPersistent symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19., with any degree of knowledge from simple to highly technical. CLEAR will search the research papers and articles, then it will return an answer 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 alongside its answer. You can then click on suggested follow-up questions, or ask a new one, or ask it to restate the answer in simpler terms or in more technical language.

Some sample questions you can ask the chatbot:

We're pretty 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. CLEAR is currently just for English-language questions and responses, but we're hoping to make it multi-lingual in the future.

PHAN recommends that everyone mask when they’re in public indoor spaces, outdoor spaces that are very crowded, or private spaces where other folks are present who have not been practicing mitigations. But we know it's not always not possible to mask in all those situations, so if you're not able to mask all the time: we recommend focusing on three places – grocery stores, healthcare settings, and mass transit – that will make the most difference for you and for others, especially those who are immuno-compromised.

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 symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. 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.

Sept. 10th, 2025: Report from George Washington University shows that the proposed CDC budget cuts will harm public health. https://mediarelations.gwu.edu/new-research-proposed-cdc-budget-cuts-harm-public-health

Sept. 13, 2025: Denver Public Schools have equipped every classroom with air quality monitors and heat sensors. They're one of the early adopters of this technology and among the first districts in the country with the ability to monitor every classroom.

Sept. 17th, 2025: Former CDC director Dr Susan Monarez testified in front of the Senate health committee. She told the committee that RFK Jr is dismantling scientific expertise at the CDC and endangering public health, and said she believes if the anti-vaccine policies of the ACIP committee members are implemented as expected, preventable communicable diseases like polio will return.

Sept. 18th, 2025: The West Coast Health Alliance, comprising the states of California, Oregon, Washing, and Hawaii, has issued its own new vaccine guidelines in a break from the CDC. "'"In the face of federal leadership that has completely failed us, the West Coast is taking action,' said [California] Gov. Gavin Newsom."

Sept. 18th, 2025: The states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York State, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and New York City announced that they have officially formed the Northeast Public Health Collaborative. This new multi-state collaborative will issue their own vaccine recommendations separate from the CDC and coordinate public health efforts.

Sept. 18th, 2025: HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., convened a wide-ranging forum on Long COVIDPersistent symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19.. The forum included Long COVIDPersistent symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. patients, clinicians, and researches, including PHAN board member Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly and Yale Long COVIDPersistent symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. researcher Dr. Akiko Iwasaki.

Sept. 23rd, 2025: The United Nations “Healthy Indoor Air” event took place as part of the General Assembly in New York City. The event brought clean-air experts and policy-makers from around the world to highlight projects and policies that are making a difference. A notable speaker was Violet Affleck, who spoke passionately as a youth advocate to say Long COVIDPersistent symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. is stealing young people's present.

Sept. 26th, 2025: Twenty-six states have created policies or directives to allow residents to get the COVID-19A disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, leading to respiratory illness. vaccine without requiring a prescription. Additionally, 13 states have moved to require state-regulated health insurance companies to cover the cost of the prescription with no cost to the patient. From the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF): “The recent moves by many states to de-couple their vaccine policy determinations from federal recommendations to ensure continued access as the federal government takes steps that narrow access is unprecedented, and will likely continue as the federal government pursues further changes to vaccine recommendations.”

Sept. 26th, 2025: South Carolina reports its fourth measles case this year. The South Carolina Department of Public Health said this patient was not vaccinated, and this case comes as the number of unvaccinated residents in the state appears to be growing.

Sept. 30th, 2025: European Parliament hosts a workshop on Long COVIDPersistent symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19.. The event brought together MEPs (Members of Parliament), researchers, policymakers, professionals, and advocates to foster a coordinated, multidisciplinary debate on Long CovidPersistent symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19.. The long-term goal is to contribute developing effective and long-term strategies for addressing Long COVIDPersistent symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. across Europe.

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 symptoms following recovery from acute COVID-19. 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, and 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.; and website/Wordpress developers

CLEAN/CLEAR: 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.

Another way to help support us is to follow us on social media and share our posts, on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. When you follow us, like our posts, replay to our posts, and share our posts, it all adds up to help increase our visibility.