Commemorating Long COVID Awareness Day with The Sick Times

Join us to commemorate Long COVID Awareness Day at a panel hosted by The Sick Times, the only news site dedicated to Long COVID and related diseases.

Journalists and organizers will look back on the past five years and discuss what’s next in the fight for pandemic justice. As the pandemic continues — but goes ignored by mainstream media, political leaders, and even leftist and advocacy organizations — it’s more important than ever to support and uplift the community members most impacted by this deadly and disabling disease. In this event, we’ll reflect on COVID history and discuss how leading NYC-based organizations are planning for the future.

Event details

Featuring:

  • Readings from contributors who have written essays for The Sick Times

  • A panel discussion with Sick Times editors Betsy Ladyzhets and Heather Hogan, and local Long COVID and COVID organizers including Emi Kane, S4HI director and Jenna Bitar, BIPOC Communicators Fellow with Long COVID Justice

  • Audience Q&A

Access notes:

  • Capacity at The Nonbinarian is limited to 40 in-person attendees; we’ll also be livestreaming on Zoom.

  • All in-person attendees are required to wear high-quality masks (KN95/N95 or better). Masks will be available if needed. Testing beforehand is encouraged. If you don’t feel well, please stay home!

2024 Highlights

As 2024 wraps up, we’re looking back at our accomplishments and looking forward to the critical work that we’ll carry into 2025. Highlights from the past year include:

• Publishing Long COVID Essentials, a series of 30+ resource sheets about navigating Long COVID & associated conditions, created in partnership with The Sick Times. Available in English and Spanish.

• Engaging 10,000+ people in organizing against mask bans via strategic cross-movement partnerships with other groups at the forefront of pandemic justice and civil liberties

• Launching an ongoing dialogue with the U.S. CDC to push for patient and advocate-led recommendations to be incorporated into official guidance about masking, treatment, research, and more.

• Launching the HIV Complexities Project, led by and for people living with HIV & complex chronic conditions, in partnership with Citizens’ Public Health Literacy (CIPHER) project at Columbia University, supporting HIV networks, peer navigators, community health workers, providers and advocates to integrate Long COVID & complex chronic illness into their work.

• Finalizing our NYC Needs Assessment + Action Plan, the first city-level patient-led needs assessment for Long COVID in the U.S., in partnership with CUNY School of Public Health and community partners. Our research-based, patient-led Action Plan will launch in 2025.

• Running our narrative change BIPOC Fellowship and Long COVID Communicators program, providing material and capacity-building support to Black, Indigenous, and people of color activists, artists, and researchers who are living with Long COVID and complex chronic illness.

• Expanding the resources on the Long COVID Justice website to include more information on crucial topics like: overlaps of Long COVID with ME/CFS, impacts of Long COVID in trans communities, finding LC-competent providers, applying to Social Security & other disability supports, connecting with local & online organizing and support groups.

• Creating a digital hub for sharing stories from Listening for the Long Haul, our 2 year long oral history project in partnership with the University of Illinois-Chicago featuring 30+ hours of oral histories conducted by trained Narrative Architects living with Long COVID and associated conditions.

• Partnering on campaigns, education, organizing and outreach with Peoples CDC, ACT UP NY, MEAction, Fight for the Future, Mask Together America, Pan End It!, Peoples Hub, Naming the Lost, Body Politic, A Better Balance, and others.

• Giving interviews with outlets including The Sick Times, Disability Visibility, Clear Health Costs, NPR, National Geographic, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Columbia University student radio.

Project launch: HIV Complexities Project

S4HI is excited to announce our HIV Complexities Project, led by and for people living with HIV (PLHIV) and complex chronic conditions.

The project has a broad reach, and includes:

- A monthly online support group for PLHIV with complex chronic conditions.

- Resources in English and Spanish for PLHIV in our Long COVID Essentials suite of health ed fact sheets.

- Support for national networks of PLHIV, including the central U.S. Caucus of PLHIV, to strengthen their capacity to include disabling complex chronic conditions in their work.

- Curricula for HIV peer navigators, community health workers, providers and advocates, developed in partnership with the Citizens’ Public Health Literacy (CIPHER) project at Columbia University.

- Accessible public health education to provide timely, accurate and actionable information on HIV & complex chronic conditions.

Long COVID Essentials: a new resources series

We are excited to announce Long COVID Essentials, a new collaboration between The Sick Times and Long COVID Justice, a project of Strategies for High Impact.

Over the next several months, we’ll be publishing over 30 resource sheets that provide foundational information about navigating Long COVID. Each sheet can be printed and/or shared as a digital PDF. Whether you’re newly experiencing confusing symptoms, have had this disease for years, or are helping others in your community, Long COVID Essentials will help you support yourself and your community.

This series is designed by and for people with Long COVID and associated diseases. Each resource sheet has been reviewed by people living with Long COVID and/or caregivers, and by medical experts who provide Long COVID care.

In the absence of public health support and guidance from our government and healthcare systems, we hope these resources will support you in taking care of yourself and your community. We’ve seen the attention of the media and leaders wane, funding disappear, and misinformation spread — even as the overlooked impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and Long COVID crisis remain widespread. And these impacts are hitting hardest in already marginalized communities.

Our work remains as urgent as ever, and we’ll keep bringing information to the fight for pandemic justice and care for all. The stories and experiences of people with Long COVID must be told, believed, and prioritized!

We encourage you to share Long COVID Essentials with healthcare providers, community leaders and organizations, mutual aid groups, on social media, and more.

To stay informed of when new resources are published (and much more!), join our list.

Long COVID Essentials is part of the health education component of our pilot Needs Assessment and Action Project (NYC).