Vermont PANDAS & PANS Awareness 5K Run/Walk

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Burlington Surf Club, Burlington VT

Saturday, October 11th, 2025

🏃‍♂️ Welcome to the Vermont PANDAS & PANS Awareness Event!

Join us for a 5K fun run and walk along in Burlington on October 11, 2025 to raise awareness for PANS/PANDAS here in Vermont—an often-overlooked autoimmune disorder affecting children and young adults. We’re calling on our citizens of Vermont to join us in raising awareness and moving towards change and healing.

🎉 Event Description

Family-Friendly: This is a family-friendly run/walk in Burlington.
Everyone Welcome: From regular runners ready to race to walkers looking for some good community fun.
Fun Activities: We'll have a DJ, snacks, cool t-shirts, and medals.
Resources: Experts will be available to help us learn about this important condition facing our kids.

🤝 Our Partnership

We are again partnering with The Alex Manfull Fund (TAMF), a New Hampshire-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, that supports awareness, education, and research to further understand the incidence, etiology, and best treatment of post-infectious neuroimmune disorders (aka PANDAS, PANS, and Autoimmune Encephalitis) with an emphasis on their manifestation in Adolescents and Young Adults. TAMF has established a fellowship fund at Dartmouth Hospital’s Neuroimmune Psychiatric Disorder (NIPD) clinic. Net proceeds from our event will be given to NIPD in support of their clinic.

🧠 What are PANS and PANDAS?

PANS (Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome) and PANDAS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal infections) occur when a child’s immune response to an infection causes inflammation in the brain. The inflammation can cause the sudden onset of behavioral, neurological, and personality changes. The effects of PANS/PANDAS on children and their families are devastating—yet these conditions are still relatively unknown in Vermont, making diagnosis and treatment extremely difficult. Learn more about this condition and its symptoms.

💖 A Note from the Gaskell Family

Welcome to the PANDAS/PANS 5K! We are a family of 5 living in Burlington looking to transform the hardship of our own PANDAS journey into a beacon of hope and progress for others.

In September 2022, at age 8, our son experienced a sudden, acute onset of extreme neuropsychiatric symptoms. As his parents, we sought help from doctors, psychiatrists, and local resources but to no avail: his condition continued to spiral. Thanks to one of our son’s former teachers, who witnessed our struggle and had read about PANDAS on Facebook, we got a first glimpse of what could be happening. In June 2023, a clinic at Dartmouth Hospital diagnosed our son with PANDAS. Since then, treatment and recovery have been long and arduous: however, finally—now almost two years later—his condition has improved significantly. With a bit of blue sky returning for our family, we’ve emerged with a clear mission: to help others living with this devastating condition.