DermYoung Launches PPE Initiative

DermYoung, a skincare company in Boston, MA, recently launched an initiative in partnership with medical spas to donate much needed personal protection equipment (PPE) to local hospitals to aid in the protection of hospital staff from the spread of COVID-19, including Massachusetts General Hospital, a teaching hospital for Harvard Medical School.

According to CEO of the company, Yang Brooks, M.D., this mission hits close to home. DermYoung was founded by skin scientists at Mass General, with Dr. Brooks and her partners either formally or currently attached to the school.

Within 24 hours of starting the initiative, the company collected more than 500 surgical and N95 respiratory masks which were then sent to colleagues in Boston for delivery to Mass General and other local hospitals.

“It was really heartbreaking for us to learn that many of our friends and former medical colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital and really everywhere, were managing the COVID-19 pandemic without sufficient protective gear,” says Dr. Brooks in a release announcing the initiative. “Our motivation to help in any way we could grew stronger when we learned that some of our friends who are on the front lines, were in quarantine with possible COVID-19 symptoms.”

DermYoung is now extending this effort to medical spas outside of the company’s immediate customer network in the hope to encourage the donation of PPE to local hospitals and clinics.

Along with this, they are continuing to identify sources of N95 respiratory masks, face shields, gloves and hand sanitizer and “testing how to best treat excessively washed, itchy, flaky hands and the bruising left after wearing N95 for extensive hours,” says Dr. Brooks.

Please contact Dr. Brooks at ysbrooks@dermyoung.com or visit GetUsPPE.org to join the effort and find instructions submitted by healthcare workers themselves, what they need most and how to get those items to donation sites.