Long COVID Justice presents at Autistic Self-Advocacy Network’s annual Gala

We’re thrilled to share that our Long COVID Justice project is the recipient of the 2024 Creating Community Together Award from the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network (ASAN). Join us at ASAN’s annual gala for a panel featuring S4HI co-director Emi Kane and other powerful organizers on October 30!

Event info via ASAN:
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“Sowing Safety: Cultivating Protections & Weeding Out Harmful Policies During the Ongoing Pandemic” panel

PANEL INFO
As mask bans have continued popping up and pandemic protections are lifted, many disabled people are disproportionately impacted, facing heightened risks in a society increasingly eager to move on from the pandemic. We know that COVID-19 is still an issue. We’ll be joined by experts discussing how to navigate the continual erosion of pandemic protections, the harm caused by mask bans, and what we can do to support and keep each other safer.

PANELISTS
• Emi Kane
• Eiryn Griest Schwartzman
• Ngozi Alston

TIME & DATE
• Weds Oct 30, 3-4:45 PM ET, zoom
• Full gala schedule (3-8pm), panelist bios, & tickets

ACCESS NOTES
• Panel presentations will be in spoken English with CART.
• Format: Panel presentation followed by Q&A.
• Camera optional. No breakout groups. Chat will be open.
• For access requests, contact: info@autisticadvocacy.org
• This session will be recorded. Recording & resources will be shared with everyone who registered, & posted online on ASAN’s YouTube channel.

ABOUT THE GALA
• A night of panels, celebration, and community.
• After the panels, the award ceremony will take place from 7:30-8:00pm ET.
• This year’s theme is Grow With Us — in recognition of ASAN'S growth and a tribute to the power of our grassroots to fight for the rights of our community.
• Everyone’s welcome.
• ASAN asks that gala attendees donate if they are able to do so, but donations are never required to attend.

ABOUT ASAN
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network seeks to advance the principles of the disability rights movement with regard to autism. Nothing About Us, Without Us!

HIV-Long COVID support group

Long COVID Justice, a project of Strategies for High Impact, is launching a new support group for people living with both HIV and Long COVID.

The group is free to join, but we ask that you to commit to attending all four sessions. We’ll meet every other Thursday on Zoom: October 24, November 7 & 21, and December 5 2024 from 6:30pm – 8:00pm.

If you can’t join on these dates, you can sign up to be informed when 2025 dates are released.

Note: Participants must live in the U.S. (regardless of immigration status).

Learn more and sign up here.

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).

Tell the CDC: New CDC COVID-19 isolation guidance weakens labor protections, discriminates against high-risk people, and does not match the science

Strategies for High Impact and our Long COVID Justice project have signed on to Pan End It’s new letter to CDC Director Mandy Cohen, which demands that the CDC take a strong stand for public health and resist political and corporate pressure to downplay the dangers of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The CDC’s recently revised COVID isolation guidance weakens labor protections, discriminates against high-risk people, and does not match the science. In response, this letter calls for the CDC to make changes including revising their shortened COVID isolation guidelines, working with other agencies in support of universal paid sick leave, emphasizing masking and testing as core prevention strategies, and publishing more specific information on high-risk conditions.

Use this template to add your name and send your own personalized letter to the CDC.

Long COVID advocates testify at first-ever Senate hearing

Strategies for High Impact (S4HI) and its Long COVID Justice project are joining with other advocates to tell Congress that it is beyond time to take action on Long COVID and associated diseases (LCAD).

Long COVID Justice started the new year by meeting with staff from the U.S. Senate HELP Committee as they prepared to host a hearing on Long COVID. At the January 19th hearing, patients, other experts, and a parent of a child with Long COVID shared their experiences and demands, including the need to recognize health disparities for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities who face disproportionately high levels of LCAD. The hearing and overflow rooms were full of advocates – including Long COVID Justice co-founder Gabriel San Emeterio – all wearing K/N95 masks.

Read more

New project launch: NYC Needs Assessment and Action Plan

The NYC Long COVID Needs Assessment and Action Plan (NAAP) is a major research and advocacy project designed in partnership with S4HI’s Long COVID Justice NYC chapter. The NAAP will focus on people with Long COVID from highly affected communities whose needs have largely been overlooked, including monolingual Spanish speakers, people living with HIV, trans and non-binary people, and children/youth.

Read more

New project launch: Listening for the Long Haul

Listening for the Long Haul is an oral history project created by Strategies for High Impact in partnership with History Moves at University of Illinois-Chicago, which received a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Together, we are training and supporting COVID-19 longhaulers to interview and narrate their own experiences. We will then create digital humanities resources for distributing those stories and bringing about narrative change.

“Listening for the Long Haul is a truly collaborative project, in which chronically ill and disabled people work together to tell our stories, with full control over our narratives and how they’re presented. It’s in the truest spirit of disability justice: ‘Nothing about us without us!’ ”

— S4HI co-founder Gabriel San Emeterio

Public programming and a new website for the project will be launched in 2024.