A Breath of Hope Lung Foundation (ABOH) recently announced its $100K in 100 Days Spring Campaign focused on finding lung cancer earlier. We are grateful for a $50,000 matching gift from a generous stage 4 lung cancer survivor who well knows what it is like to get a stage 4 cancer diagnosis with no warning.
Knowing that 70% of lung cancers are diagnosed in stage 3 or 4, ABOH keeps its focus on early detection hoping that one day, we will educate and screen everyone toward a much-needed improvement in the five-year survival rate of around 20%.In November, we will celebrate Nat’l Lung Cancer Awareness Month and promote the white ribbon. We will have just left a pink-ribbon covered world.
From sports teams to coffee houses to major businesses, the world will turn pink in October in support of research and awareness for breast cancer and its easy-to-access screening tool – the mammogram. It has been an amazing forty years for the breast cancer field and survival rates are now over 90%. We are deeply grateful for the endless awareness and science that contributed to annual mammograms that find most breast cancers early when it is easier to treat.
But, the simple fact is: LUNG CANCER KILLS NEARLY TWICE AS MANY WOMEN AS BREAST CANCER EACH YEAR, and the world will not turn white with ribbons in November. Even with recent USPSTF guideline changes that allow people to receive annual low-dose CT scans at a lower age (50) and with less smoking history (20 packs), the vast majority of people who will get lung cancer in the next few years will not be eligible for preventative annual screening.
We are making progress in this field, but early detection of lung cancer remains a significant challenge for our country, especially for nonsmokers. As a reminder, nearly 60% of people diagnosed with lung cancer each year are former or never-smokers. Thanks for sticking with us as we focus on research that supports the discovery of improved methods and tests for detecting lung cancer earlier, awareness of the symptoms and causes of lung cancer that lead to undelayed scans, and our patient transportation program that will soon be providing rides to screening, as well as medical appointments and treatment.
Visit our Patient & Family Support page to learn more about our rides program.
A Breath of Hope Lung Foundation
April 5, 2021
