Lung Fibrosis Awareness Month Highlights

September was Lung Fibrosis (or Pulmonary Fibrosis) Awareness Month and we were delighted this year that our Every Breath Matters, Know the Signs campaign helped get the word out across the country. We think we achieved our goal of more than 1 million people in Ireland reached. Here’s how we did it.

• We launched the month with a meeting with the Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, seeking to release €500,000 in funding that had been allocated for lung fibrosis in Budget 2025, and another €500,000 for 2026. Since our meeting with Minister MacNeill and representatives from the Department of Health and the HSE, the funding has been released and we are now working with the HSE to ensure it is utilised in the priorities we advocated for (pulmonary rehabilitation, nursing support for patients, and a disease registry).
• The first week also commenced our “radio blitz” featuring patient advocates and ILFA staff speaking on radio stations across the country and in public service radio ads on RTE1 and LyricFM.
• We also began our print campaign with features in the Irish Independent, the Irish Daily Mail, Medical News Today, and other print and online media channels.
• Throughout the month our Facebook and LinkedIn campaigns were quite strong, seeing high engagement across our key social channels.
• We were absolutely delighted when on the 23rd of September three patient advocates were featured in the Irish Times Health segment!
• We wrapped things up on World Lung Day with two excellent events, the first a joint event with the Irish Thoracic Society, the Asthma Society, COPD Ireland, and Alpha-1 to raise awareness of lung health issues with TDs and Senators. We were delighted at the strong turnout and thanks so much to all of our members who contacted their TDs. In particular, Minister Buttimer dropped by and we also had a chance to press our case with Padraig Rice, Chair of the Health Committee. Two of our patient advocates even brought an RTE journalist into the event who highlighted the challenges of lung fibrosis on RTE.ie later that day.
• In the afternoon of World Lung Day we were cycling in front of the Gaiety Theatre with our friends from the Central Bank raising funds on an absolutely lovely crisp fall day (no rain this year!). Massive thanks to our members who turned out to show their support both at the event in the morning and at the fundraiser in the afternoon. It was wonderful to see you!

So now….at the close of our awareness month…what has all this activity meant?

It’s meant there are people who now know about lung fibrosis who didn’t know about it before. Maybe they’ve been having symptoms and dismissing them or maybe they’ve seen a family member struggling but didn’t know what to do. Now they know. It’s also meant that people who might have been diagnosed but weren’t referred to a specialist centre or who didn’t know about ILFA are now aware of resources that can support them.

We hope that the campaign has made people aware of lung fibrosis.

We hope that people experiencing symptoms will now get diagnosed.

We hope that people who have been diagnosed will now get better care and support.

A successful campaign – we hope this is what we’ve achieved together.

Thank you for helping us get the word out!

Note: Lung Fibrosis Awareness Month activities were generously funded by