As much as we might gripe about our extended quarantine and how
social distancing
has weighed on our anxiety levels, we never fail to acknowledge the people fighting on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic—healthcare workers. These men and women are heroes, period, full stop. Without them, we would have a 0-percent chance of curbing the current outbreak, not to mention ensuring that the people who have contracted the virus receive the treatment they need. Even as we call for the local, state, and federal governments to provide doctors and nurses with the personal protective equipment they desperately need, we’ve been searching for other ways to give back to those who are working day and night to keep us healthy (often sacrificing their own safety in the process).
Beauty products might seem insignificant compared to rubber gloves and N95 masks, but when your hands and face are chapped as a result of a 14-hour shift at the hospital, they can provide the faintest glimmer of relief in an otherwise high-stress day. Happily, two of our fellow beauty editors,
Kristina Rodulfo
and
Kathleen Hou
, along with their pals
Caroline Moss
and
Cheryl Wischhover
, who is a former nurse, started an initiative called
Donate Beauty
to supply overworked healthcare workers with products like hand cream, sheet masks, and sunscreen. Over the last four weeks, roughly 140,000 products (!!) have been donated to workers at 250+ hospitals across the country.
“Cheryl heard from friends that the masks were making their skin incredibly dry and chapped,” explains Hou. “We’ve seen videos and photos of the toll that wearing them all day can have—bruises, dark indents, extreme irritation, and acne. She posted about wanting to start something on Twitter, and then [writer] Caroline Moss, myself, and Kristina reached out.”
Below, Hou and Rodulfo (whose mom is a nurse at the MSKCC ward in New York) share more about how they’ve managed to coordinate with brands across the industry to distribute products to those in need, as well as other ways for people to donate beauty supplies to doctors and nurses in their communities.
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