Linda Wenger
[email protected]
(973) 449-3214
WASHINGTON, DC (November 1, 2020)—Kicking off Lung Cancer Awareness Month, LUNGevity, the nation’s leading lung cancer-focused nonprofit organization, launched its Inhale for Life: Right Track public service campaign. This powerful campaign features the stories of lung cancer survivors and their families and aims to answer the first question of people recently diagnosed with lung cancer: “What do I do now?”
The fourth installment in LUNGevity’s annual Inhale for Life campaign series to educate lung cancer patients and their families about achieving the best outcomes, Inhale for Life: Right Track is designed to give expert advice on the most important first steps people can take following a lung cancer diagnosis.
The Right Track offers a roadmap for achieving the best possible outcomes in lung cancer treatment and care. Newly diagnosed patients are advised to get on the right track right away—seeing the right team, having the right tests, and getting the right treatment, right from the start.
Seeing the right team means consulting with specialists who diagnose and treat a high volume of patients with lung cancer and finding the right advocacy team. Having the right test—comprehensive biomarker testing—is essential to help make a specific diagnosis of what subtype of lung cancer a person may have and will inform a more accurate treatment approach. The right treatment plan can best be made by waiting for the results of those tests to understand your specific type of lung cancer. The Right Track® was developed by the Kraft Harvard Business School Precision Medicine Accelerator, a pan-cancer working group of patient advocacy organizations, in which LUNGevity participated.
“Diagnostic and therapeutic options for lung cancer are accelerating at an unprecedented pace,” says Andrea Ferris, President and CEO of LUNGevity Foundation. “Today, more people than ever are living well with lung cancer, thanks to advances in research, biomarker testing, and new and more personalized treatment plans. However, the majority of people diagnosed with lung cancer still do not take advantage of these new discoveries. Our goal with Inhale for Life: Right Track is to reach as many people as possible who have been diagnosed with lung cancer and educate them on how to access the best care.”
The Inhale for Life: Right Track videos showcase lung cancer survivors who followed the right steps and are able to continue to live and thrive, sharing family experiences. One survivor has written a book and completed a graduate degree since diagnosis. Two medical oncologists, Dr. Narjust Duma of University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center, Madison, WI, and Dr. Raymond Osarogiagbon of Baptist Memorial Hospital, Memphis, TN, share their expertise and encourage patients to play an active role in developing a treatment plan.
The Inhale for Life: Right Track campaign is supported in part by grants from AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, EMD Serono, Genentech, and Takeda. The campaign can be seen at https://lungevity.org/recently-diagnosed
About LUNGevity Foundation
LUNGevity Foundation is the nation’s leading lung cancer organization focused on improving outcomes for people with lung cancer through research, education, policy initiatives, and support and engagement for patients, survivors, and caregivers. LUNGevity seeks to make an immediate impact on quality of life and survivorship for everyone touched by the disease—while promoting health equity by addressing disparities throughout the care continuum. LUNGevity works tirelessly to advance research into early detection and more effective treatments, provide information and educational tools to empower patients and their caregivers, promote impactful public policy initiatives, and amplify the patient voice through research and engagement. The organization provides an active community for patients and survivors—and those who help them live longer and better lives.
Comprehensive resources include a medically vetted and patient-centric website, a toll-free HELPLine for support, the International Lung Cancer Survivorship Conference, and an easy-to-use Clinical Trial Finder, among other tools. All of these programs are to achieve our vision—a world where no one dies of lung cancer. LUNGevity Foundation is proud to be a four-star Charity Navigator organization.
Please visit www.LUNGevity.org to learn more.
About Lung Cancer in the U.S.
- About 1 in 16 Americans will be diagnosed with lung cancer in their lifetime
- More than 228,000 people in the U.S. will be diagnosed with lung cancer this year
- About 60%-65% of all new lung cancer diagnoses are among people who have never smoked or are former smokers
- Lung cancer takes more lives than the next three leading cancers (colorectal, breast, and prostate) combined
- Only 21% of all people diagnosed with lung cancer will survive 5 years or more, BUT if it’s caught before it spreads, the chance of 5-year survival improves dramatically