Please join the Pulmonary Hypertension Association (PHA) team in celebrating Pulmonary Hypertension (PH) Awareness Month.

Each November, PHA provides tools to help the PH community educate the public, the health care community and elected officials about this rare, often-misunderstood disease. This year, we’re focusing on PH caused by left-heart disease. We’ll highlight this topic in our Nov. 16 PHA Live webinar presented by Vineet Agrawal, M.D., Ph.D.

For more general information to Spark Awareness about PH, we’re bringing back our award-winning interactive Awareness Month calendar. We encourage you to visit the calendar each day to download resources and rewards to share with your families, friends and colleagues. I hope you’ll find the resources as informative and engaging as I do.

The calendar isn’t the only way you can help Spark Awareness. Our website offers many ways to take part in PH Awareness Month. As in previous years, you’ll find a toolkit with social media graphics, sample posts, profile and cover images, customizable news releases to share with local media outlets, and other resources to raise PH awareness.

The toolkit also offers flyers for health care professionals to print and post in their offices and clinics.

This year’s Awareness Month theme also reflects our 30th anniversary campaign, “Lighting the Way Forward.” Every week in November, we’ll share a milestone about how PHA has been lighting the way forward since its 1991 inception. As we look back on our achievements, we’re motivated to continue working toward our vision of a world without PH, empowered by hope.

As we mark our second straight PH Awareness Month amid the COVID-19 pandemic, our Spark Awareness activities once again will be solely online. That includes our Advocacy Day of Action on Nov. 1 and CTEPH Awareness Day Nov. 10.

For the Day of Action, please take a few moments to share your PH experiences with policy makers using this form. Let Congress know how PH affects your health and quality of life and how lawmakers can improve treatment access for you and others with rare disease.

For CTEPH Awareness Day, help us Spark Awareness for chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH), a form of PH caused by old blood clots in the lungs. You don’t have to wait until November to get started: Register for today’s PHA Live webinar on PH and CTEPH. If you miss the presentation, you can stream the recording afterward.

We hope you join us in our efforts to Spark Awareness throughout November. Please share our Awareness Month resources on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn and spark conversations in your social media feeds. We also encourage you contact your local media outlets and elected officials about PH Awareness Month.

Your participation is critical to Spark Awareness in November and throughout the year. We thank you for your support of PHA and your commitment to helping us secure earlier diagnosis, improved outcomes and better understanding of PH. We also thank Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Bayer for supporting PH awareness.

Please let us know how you plan to Spark Awareness in November. Until we can meet in person, I look forward to hearing from you.

With gratitude and respect,