The Taskforce for Lung Health is a collaboration of the largest ever group of organisations and individuals who have come together, as a team, to improve lung health.

The Taskforce has over 50 members including patients, carers, healthcare professionals, the voluntary sector and professional associations. An Industries Forum working alongside the Taskforce includes representatives from the pharmaceutical, diagnostics, devices and digital industries. 

The Taskforce’s journey began in 2018, with a clear and ambitious mission to unite the respiratory sector to improve lung health. Read more about our progress here.

Our primary goal was to elevate the importance of lung health within the NHS. Respiratory illness has since featured at the heart of NHS and government strategy in the NHS Long Term Plan and in the Major Conditions Strategy drafted in 2024. We are working to promote the inclusion of respiratory as a priority in the new NHS Ten Year Plan due in spring 2025.

In 2024 and 2025 the Taskforce will focus on high-level policy goals, engaging with the NHS and the Government to push meaningful advancements in lung health policy. Our work is centred around three core themes:

• Diagnosis: Working to reduce the time people with lung conditions have to wait for an accurate diagnosis, improving access to diagnostic testing, and ensuring clear patient pathways are in place around the country.
• Access to treatments: Working to improve patient access to the right treatments for them, whatever their condition, and enabling the uptake of transformative new medicines, such as biologics for COPD and severe asthma. We call for better funding for pharmacies and for promotion of newer, more effective treatment regimes.
• Workforce: Working to ensure we have the right staff in the right place at the right time to provide the best possible care for patients, and that funding for these services is secure and sustainable. This means supporting clinicians to identify their workforce needs, and promoting better training and recruitment.

Industries Forum

Representatives from the pharmaceutical, diagnostics, devices and digital industries make up an Industries Forum that contributes to the work of the Taskforce. The Industries Forum has no editorial control over the activities of the Taskforce.

Some Industries Forum members provide financial backing to the Taskforce. This is not a condition of membership of the Industries Forum and it provides no editorial rights. No Industries Forum members have voting rights on the Taskforce. Read about the Taskforce sponsors.

You can read answers to questions you might have about the Taskforce.

Working groups

To drive forward transformation in the care of people with respiratory disease the Taskforce has a number of working groups in the priority areas of:

Taskforce sponsors

We are grateful to the sponsors of the Taskforce. In 2022, these companies are supporting the work of the Taskforce financially but have no editorial rights: 

•        AstraZeneca
•        Amgen
•        Chiesi
•        GSK
•        Janssen
•        MSD
•        Pari Medical
•        Pfizer
•        Sanofi
•        Seqirus
•        Takeda
•        Trudell Medical
•        Verona Pharma