Letter from WPSR President Ken Lans

July 2026

Across Washington state and throughout the country, we are witnessing an escalation of challenges – to our health, safety, and basic freedoms – that demand immediate action. Climate progress is being attacked just as widespread unmistakable evidence of increasing impacts tells us we must accelerate our energy transition. Longstanding protections for equal rights and health equity are being overturned — and preeminent health institutions and foundational, life-saving research have been critically dismantled. 

 At the same time, the administration is launching wars of choice, pushing for obscene levels of increased military spending, and demonstrating unqualified, irrational, and even unstable leadership — all of which have significantly deepened global instability and renewed concerns about nuclear proliferation.

 Locally, the impacts of climate change, pollution, and inequity on health are no longer abstract—they are unfolding in real time. From record-breaking heat waves in the Puget Sound region, to wildfire smoke choking communities across both Eastern and Western Washington, to the persistent threat posed by the nuclear weapons — these risks are immediate, measurable, and preventable.

At WPSR, we bring the trusted health professional voice to the decision-makers. With your support and partnership and in a climate of increasing polarization and competing priorities, we are achieving meaningful progress — progress that you can read about in other articles in this issue of Remedy. 

These actions and this progress are not incremental steps—they are structural changes that protect health in our state at scale. They also provide a model for other states, and our country, to follow at such time as they are able to do so. And we’re not stopping there.  We are working to expand our policy impact, deepen our coalition partnerships, and mobilize more health professionals across Washington — but doing so requires sustained, strategic investment, and that’s where you can help, by joining us actively in our advocacy and with your generous financial donations to WPSR.

It’s likely that you, like many others, are profoundly — and appropriately — scared and worried about the future of our democracy. In soliciting donations recently, I’ve been told, more than once, “This year I need to direct my money to protecting democracy.” I applaud that — I, myself, will be contributing to efforts and organizations involved in that critical fight. But I also ask them to please consider doing both — give what you can to protecting our democracy AND donate to WPSR, because it’s also a critical time to continue tackling climate change, addressing bloated military spending and the dangers of nuclear proliferation, and fighting for a more just and equitable future for all. If ever there was a time to part with a chunk of your money to do good, now is that time.

It’s not just for democracy’s sake that I will donate to those efforts, though that in itself would be enough. It’s magnified by the reality that if the current administration gets to keep their power — as they demonstrate over and over — attacks on fighting climate change will continue, pollution will get worse, the nuclear threat will increase, the world will become a less safe place, more people around the world will get sick and die, a charlatan will continue to endanger our health here, and our country will become less just and even more unequal.

So, yes, I’m asking you to give generously to WPSR, to keep driving the progress that we’ve been helping bring about here in our Washington. But I’m also imploring you to use your voices to protect democracy by — in addition to making wisely directed donations — not just voting in elections, but also by volunteering your time and energy to efforts and organizations working in districts and states where it matters — to register people, to get out the vote, and to make sure that in November everyone who deserves to do so gets to exercise their right to vote.

While, as a 501c3 non-profit, WPSR can’t support individual candidates, we can speak out about the issues we care so much about. We, and you, can shout out with our loudest voices that who’s in office, the actions they direct, and the policies they put in place matters. Having the right people in power — and taking it away from those doing wrong — matters. That is the immediate action that’s demanded of us at this moment.

In peace and health,

Ken

Ken Lans, MD, MBA

WPSR Board President