Partner in focus: Mark Brooke, CEO, Lung Foundation Australia

What is the vision of the Lung Foundation Australia?

Lung Foundation Australia enables life-saving research, and champions programs so that Australians with lung disease and lung cancer can live their best life.

One in three Australians will be impacted by a lung disease or condition during their lifetime. Lung Foundation Australia is the only charity and leading peak body of its kind in Australia advocating for better lung health to prevent lung disease, supporting patients and their families with world-leading programs and facilitating and sponsoring lung disease and lung cancer research.

What are some of the challenges you face?

Lung disease and lung cancer in particular face an unfair, unreasonable and devastating stigma, partly due to many lung diseases’ being association with current and former tobacco smoking. Sadly, around one in five Australians believe someone with a lung disease or lung cancer brought it on themselves and are less deserving of support. This stigma permutates the community’s empathy for patients and therefore funding and fundraising. Consciously and unconsciously, this stigma influences decisions about health care utilisation, how treatment is delivered and received, patients’ mental health and government and community investment in research, support and care.

Australians are awakening to the importance of lung health in a once in a generation opportunity. COVID has challenged so many Australians in so many ways, turning our lives upside down. People with lung disease and lung cancer are often categorised as having a pre-existing condition or co-morbidity. Throughout the pandemic Lung Foundation Australia has been placed under enormous pressure to keep pace with the requests for support, accurate information and more importantly reassurance for people living with a lung disease, and their families. Long COVID will impact a substantial number of Australians in the months and years ahead and without doubt, increase the number of people with life-limiting lung diseases.

Smoking rates are declining but under threat by the tobacco-backed vaping and e-cigarette groups. Climate change induced air quality, pollution and bushfires have presented new challenges directly linked to poor respiratory health outcomes. Workplace occupational lung diseases, like silicosis, are once again increasing in prevalence.

Lung Foundation Australia sits on the cusp of a new era where our resources will be stretched and our relevance never more important in the face of these clear and present challenges to Australia’s lung health.

Can you explain one of your organisation's recent innovations?

Lung disease represents about nine per cent of Australia’s total health burden yet an analysis of 10 years of Government and non-government research investment highlights the disparity of investment with only two per cent of funding flowing to lung disease (excluding COVID-19). Sadly, investment is at an all-time low and we are losing too many promising young clinical and scientific researchers to better funded disease areas or overseas institutions. Last year Lung Foundation Australia launched its Hope Research Fund to raise $50 million over the next 10 years and build a world-leading research corpus to reinvest into early and mid-career lung disease researchers.

Perhaps one of the best examples of this strategy in action is our newly elected Chair, Associate Professor Lucy Morgan, who was a recipient of a Lung Foundation Australia research fellowship 30 years ago and now is a leader in lung health, both at home and internationally.

By 2025, Lung Foundation Australia will be one of the largest global funding providers. One year on, we achieved some remarkable results with $11 million raised and invested and $1 million in funds distributed in round one of the Hope Research Fund awards and grants.

What is it about the partnership with Healthdirect Australia that is most valuable to you?

Healthdirect Australia is one of Lung Foundation Australia’s most important strategic partners as we co-create and collaborate on highly relevant, evidence-based resources that are translated into patient facing resources. Our collaboration in several policy papers and resources avoids duplication, reduces waste and promotes collaboration. Healthdirect's profile in the community assists Lung Foundation Australia to increase our reach into new communities and sectors to ensure more Australians impacted by lung disease or lung cancer have access to the care and support they deserve.