The CONNECT Collaborator Series is an interview series where we host conversations with healthcare professionals and partners with the goal of encouraging deeper collaboration in the healthcare industry.
Watch the full CONNECT Collaborator Series video featuring our Co-Founder, Lorie Spence, and Jessica Buckley, President & CEO of the Lung Health Foundation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBwsHgKph1s
Lorie Spence: Welcome to the CONNECT Collaborator interview series, where we host 10 minute conversations with healthcare professionals and partners with the goal of encouraging deeper collaboration in the healthcare industry. Today’s guest is Jessica Buckley, President and Chief Executive Officer at the Lung Health Foundation. Jessica was appointed President and CEO of the Lung Health Foundation in September 2022. Her entrepreneurial spirit and people first leadership approach supports the Lung Health Foundation team and their drive to innovate and affect positive change for those living with lung disease. Jessica is focused on building lasting relationships across Canada with like minded organizations, governments, healthcare professionals, researchers and patients in order to fulfill the mission of improving the lung health of all Canadians. Welcome Jessica, and thank you for joining us.
Jessica Buckley: Great, Lorie, thank you. And thank you very much for having the lung health foundation on today.
Lorie Spence: Maybe we can get started with a little bit of what motivated you to become President and CEO of Lung Health Foundation and your transition into the not for profit sector.
Jessica Buckley: Well, thank you for asking that. I spent over 25 years working in sports and entertainment, and I absolutely loved my time in that industry, and it was really exciting and fun, and I reached a point in my career where I really felt that I wanted to be more community minded. I had done a lot of work in communities and with charitable foundations through my last career, and found it very fulfilling. Additionally, we did a lot of government relations and advocacy, and I wanted to be able to take those skills and bring them to the nonprofit sector. And I was really excited when the opportunity came up at the Lung Health Foundation, and I really connected with them.
Lorie Spence: I think it’s really important and unique that the skills that you bring from your entrepreneurial side, and how that’s really helping with lung health advocacy, maybe you can speak to a bit of how some of those skills now are very transferable, and what makes that unique for lung health.
Jessica Buckley: So I think on the advocacy side, the key is really being able to get stakeholder alignment. People across Canada are working so hard on lung health issues in every corner of this country, however, being able to bring those voices together and speak to elected officials is really important. So, when I joined the Lung Health Foundation, soon after speaking with many like minded organizations across Canada, and we came together and formed the National Lung Health Alliance, and it was really for the purposes of doing federal advocacy as well as provincial advocacy and helping one another out, and being able to bring those forces together to speak to policymakers and bring lung health to the forefront. Because truthfully, lung health has been an area of health that there’s high need, but it’s really sort of been overlooked and it has been underfunded through the years. So we’re really trying to bring a focus back to lung health with our elected officials.
Lorie Spence: Fabulous. And I think, you know, it’s really important to speak to the national reach that the foundation has. And in 2020 you transferred from the Ontario Lung Association to the Lung Health Foundation. Can you maybe walk us through what this national transformation means for Lung Health across Canada?
Jessica Buckley: Yes, so our organization is the Ontario Lung Association that was formed over 100 years ago. So we’re a very long standing organization that had just been focused provincially. However, the board in 2020 determined that there was great need for a strong national voice, and that federal advocacy was increasingly important, as was an investment in national research programs. These were some of the reasons why a national organization was formed, and we rebranded at that time from the Ontario Lung Association to become the Lung Health Foundation. And we’ve been working, you know, across Canada to increase our footprint, both with federal advocacy and also a national research program.
Lorie Spence: What do you think are some of the most pressing lung health issues for Canadians today, and how is Lung Health Foundation really supporting and addressing them?
Jessica Buckley: Lung health, as I mentioned earlier, it really has been overlooked in many cases, and it is estimated that one in five Canadians suffer from some type of lung health concern, whether it be asthma or COPD, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, lung cancer, or the rise of youth vaping. So some of the big concerns number one is the rise in youth vaping. And Canada now has amongst the highest youth vaping rates in the world, which is of great concern. Because, you know, vaping hasn’t been on the scene more than 10 years. So the long term impacts of vaping on the lungs is unknown, but we know that there are dangers, and some of the short term impacts of nicotine addiction are a big concern. So being able to come up with programs and nicotine cessation programs are extremely important. And that education and awareness piece. Also on the asthma, COPD and lung cancer side, it’s really about early detection, and early detection is just so critical, especially when it comes to lung cancer. Over 80% of cases are not detected until stage three or stage four, and although there have been lots of new treatments at those stages when you can catch cancer at an earlier stage, you’ve got more options. So being able to detect lung cancer and screening programs across the country is extremely important. The same goes for COPD. It is a very undiagnosed condition. It’s estimated that almost 2 million Canadians have COPD, many of them don’t even know they are living with COPD. And although it’s a chronic condition, there are ways that it can be managed and that their lifestyle can be improved in order to live well with COPD.
Lorie Spence: So maybe speaking of that, there’s a number of programs I know that Lung Health Foundation has, and we’re just wondering if you can share a little bit of what you’re doing to support healthcare providers and patients. And I know you also have things like the Better Breathing Week conference.
Jessica Buckley: Part of our commitment as the Lung Health Foundation is continuing to be committed to provider education and just how important that is. And we want all clinicians to be able to be effective in their practice when it is related to lung health, because with one in five Canadians having lung disease, we know it’s a very common occurrence to have someone come in with lung disease. We also recognize that there’s limited capacity in primary care right now, so being able to provide those education sessions for clinicians is very important. We have created a new Lunch and Learn series, which is accredited. And it’s really meant to be a one hour session where primary care clinicians or respirologists or respiratory therapists, any clinicians, can join and learn more about a specific area of lung health. Grab their lunch, sit down and do a webinar, and there are credits available, as I said. And it’s really being able to bring that information and the latest evidence based information to the clinicians. So we do ongoing education sessions like that, and then everything really culminates. You mentioned our Better Breathing Week. So through our work, previously as the Ontario Lung Association and now the Lung Health Foundation, we host an annual conference, and it’s each January. This will be our 43rd year, coming up in January of 2026. We are hosting in Toronto, this coming January. And at that conference, it’s two days of virtual where both clinicians can join, also people with lived experience can join the virtual conference. And there are many sessions where patients can get the information they need and where clinicians can get the information they need. We then do a day and a half in person in Toronto, and there are different streams specific to primary care. We have streams where they can increase their knowledge around lung health issues and also take that back to their practice.
Lorie Spence: I know at the outset you mentioned advocacy is one of the cornerstones for the Lung Health Foundation. Could you walk us through some of the organization’s current advocacy efforts, like the National Lung Health Alliance you mentioned earlier, and how that’s really having an impact for patients.
Jessica Buckley: So the National Lung Health Alliance has been a very impactful voice. We’ve come together to meet with elected officials, both federally and provincially. We’ve been doing op-eds in the media as well to get increased awareness about lung health issues, both to Canadians and to elected officials. And because we’ve had a recent election in Ontario and a current election happening federally, we’ve been working together on an initiative to keep lung health on the ballot. So all of our communications have been going out to Canadians to let them know that they can educate themselves about where healthcare sits with the different parties. And we also have a tool on our website that people can visit and send a letter to their local MP to let them know their concerns about keeping lung health at the forefront and where the needs are.
Lorie Spence: I know, as we wrap up today, we’d love for you to share where people can learn more about the Lung Health Foundation and some of the programs that you have.
Jessica Buckley: Thank you. That’s fantastic. So two things I’d love to mention, everything is available on our website at lunghealth.ca and there’s two specific programs that I would like to mention. One is something specific to healthcare providers, and it’s called The Collaborative, and it’s a newsletter. And it’s also a forum for healthcare professionals to connect to one another and to learn about the latest information on lung health and what evidence is coming out, what education sessions are coming up. So the collaborative newsletter, we would love to have you added to that. And secondly, as a patient resource, we have something called The Loop. As in L-O-O-P, stay in the loop. So The Loop is a patient network that is available to patients, where, again, they can get all the resources and learn about all the programs that the lung health foundation offers, and they can connect online and stay within the loop and join some of our coffee chats, where they can connect with others that may be going through similar challenges and learn from one another. So those are two fantastic resources available on our website.
Lorie Spence: Excellent, well we look forward to sharing both The Collaborative and The Loop, and thank you very much for meeting with us today, and we look forward to seeing what’s in the future for lung health.
Jessica Buckley: Wonderful Lori. Thank you again for the opportunity and for shining a light and awareness on lung health issues. We greatly appreciate it.
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