Taskforce: how we made the plan

The Taskforce for Lung Health is independent of government. It brings together representatives from over 40 organisations, representing patients, health care professionals, the voluntary sector and professional associations to develop a five year plan to improve lung health in England.  

In 2018, leading experts spent several months examining the key areas affecting lung health: prevention, diagnosis, treatment, life with a lung condition, end of life care and the workforce. This included a series of workshops hosted by Asthma + Lung UK (formerly known as the British Lung Foundation).  

To lay the foundation for these discussions, the Taskforce requested evidence on real world examples of policy or practice, which would improve outcomes for lung patients if introduced or replicated across the country within the next 5 years. This evidence was reviewed and ranked by Alma Economics. Read the submissions to our call for evidence. 

Our recommendations are based on evidence that considers a number of factors, including reach, impact, availability and value for money. We also identified evidence gaps. Asthma + Lung UK’s Patient Think Tank played a key role in reviewing and prioritising the recommendations.  

For most recommendations, we have captured how we will measure success by setting 1 or 5 year targets. In some cases, we’ve outlined new data that needs to be captured before we can know this.  

Acknowledgements  

Many people have helped produce this five year plan and we thank them all for their expertise and thought contributions. In particular we would like to thank:

  • All Taskforce members
  • Members of Asthma + Lung UK’s Patient Think Tank 2016–2018
  • All Industries Forum members
  • All the professionals, people with lung disease and carers featured in this report
  • Alma Economics
  • Britain Thinks
  • Hood and Woolf
  • Martin Barrow
  • Dr Martin Allen
  • Professor David Baldwin, NHS England Clinical Expert Group for Lung Cancer and Mesothelioma
  • Mr Tim Batchelor
  • Professor Bee Wee
  • Dr Jayesh Bhatt, British Paediatric Respiratory Society
  • Alexandra Christie, Association of Respiratory Nurse Specialists
  • Dr Morag Farquhar, University of East Anglia
  • Professor David Fishwick
  • Mark Flynn
  • Dr Jesme Fox
  • Dr Suzie Gillon
  • Claire Haynes
  • Robin Hinks
  • Dr Nick Hopkinson, Imperial College, London
  • Dr John Hurst
  • Dr Duncan Keeley
  • Joanne King
  • Dr Iain Lawrie, The Association for Palliative Medicine of Great Britain and Ireland
  • Mr Kajan Mahendran, Society of Cardiothoracic Surgery in Great Britain and Ireland
  • Professor Mike Morgan
  • Helen Morris, Interstitial Lung Disease Interdisciplinary Network
  • Helen Muirhead
  • Samantha Prigmore
  • Professor Stephen Spiro

We are grateful to the sponsors of the Taskforce, listed below. These companies supported the work of the Taskforce financially but had no editorial influence over the content of this report:

  • AstraZeneca UK
  • Boehringer Ingelheim
  • Chiesi Limited
  • GSK
  • Novartis UK
  • Pfizer
  • Roche
  • Seqirus

The ABPI facilitated the individual companies that were part of the Industries Forum to provide evidence to the Taskforce evidence gathering process.  

Some members of the Industries Forum coordinated with Asthma + Lung UK to provide financial support to the Taskforce. Other than this acknowledgement, no distinction was made between input from companies which contributed financially and those which did not.  

“Our plan has been developed with contributions from a wide range of experts from patients, charities and health care professionals to royal colleges and academics. We used a robust process to evaluate their contributions in order to draw up our recommendations.”  Alison Cook, Chair of the Taskforce for Lung Health and Director of External Affairs, Asthma + Lung UK

References

Full references can be found in the PDF version of the report (6.1Mb, PDF). For web-specific content: