Lung cancer screening saves lives. We know this. It has been our rallying cry for decades and has remained a core initiative. Now, we’re excited to partner on the “Screen Your Lungs” campaign to help meet our goal of bringing lung cancer screening to the millions at risk for the disease, a central tenet of our vision of doubling the five-year survival rate from 20% to 40% by 2025.
The “Screen Your Lungs” public service campaign that encourages more people at risk to get screened is a cooperative endeavor where we are proudly partnering with the American Cancer Society the National Lung Cancer Roundtable the American Lung Association, LUNGevity Foundation, and Genentech.
The campaign launches this week with a new public service ad and a consumer website at www.screenyourlungs.org. The campaign aims to motivate those at risk to undergo screening by transporting them back to a time when smoking was a part of everyday life. The website provides information about screening and resources, including information on where to get screened at GO2 Foundation’s Centers of Excellence (SCOE) network.
For our community, this call to action could not be more critical. Too many lives are needlessly lost to lung cancer because it is found too late. This can and must be reversed. Our efforts to educate the at-risk public and instill responsible screening and care in our growing COE network of dedicated community hospitals across the country remains our highest priority.
Lung cancer kills more people each year than breast, colon and prostate cancers combined. Annual lung cancer screening for the estimated 15 million at risk, people between the ages of 50-80 with at least a 20-pack years smoking history, can detect lung cancer early, before symptoms occur, when it is more treatable and even curable. Screening that is more widespread could save as many as 60,000 lives in the United States each year.
High quality screening and care is being delivered in communities all across the country. Since 1995, when the life-saving benefit of using low dose CT (LDCT) screening to detect early lung cancers was demonstrated by the International Early Lung Cancer Action Program, GO2 Foundation has remained steadfastly committed to bringing this preventive service to our community. Our COE program, which promotes high-quality standards now features more than 850 sites nationwide.
We continue to lead advocacy efforts related to screening.
- Fighting to expand coverage of lung cancer screening, similar to coverage already provided for mammograms and colonoscopies.
- Exploring how to expand the population of those who should be screened—including those with occupational exposures, such as our veterans, and individuals with a family history of the disease—through data from our SCOE networks.
- Investigating the risk factors tied to the increasing number of young adults diagnosed with lung cancer through our new Epidemiology of Young Lung Cancer study.
We are committed to transforming survivorship and anchoring it through increased rates of early detection. We are committed to ensuring that excellence in screening and care is available in every state, and close to home. We are committed to elevating national attention to reinforce the benefits of lung cancer screening.
For more information on this campaign, visit www.screenyourlungs.org.
