From Policy to Practice: What the WHO Lung Health Resolution Means for Lung Cancer Care

Ryan Quigley:

You’re listening to Project Oncology on ReachMD, and this is an AudioAbstract. I’m Ryan Quigley, and today, we’re taking a look at the World Health Organization’s new Integrated Lung Health Resolution and what it could mean for the global lung cancer community.

Adopted at the 2025 World Health Assembly, this resolution represents the first time lung cancer has been explicitly included within a comprehensive WHO lung health framework alongside other respiratory conditions. While it addresses a spectrum of diseases, from infectious to noncommunicable, our focus today is on what it signals for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of lung cancer.

Specifically, the resolution calls for a shift toward integrated approaches: bringing prevention, early detection, and treatment together within primary health systems and supported by strong referral networks. For lung cancer, that creates new opportunities to embed screening programs, strengthen early diagnosis, and connect patients quickly to specialist care.

But let’s take a step back for a moment and look at the broader context that led to this resolution. Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death worldwide, as it was responsible for 1.8 million deaths in 2022. It was also the most frequently diagnosed cancer, with an estimated 2.5 million new cases that same year. But that burden isn’t evenly shared—nearly 70 percent of lung cancer deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, where access to screening, timely diagnosis, and modern treatments can be especially limited.

This is where the resolution’s emphasis on equity matters. It calls on member states to not only strengthen access to affordable diagnostics and evidence-based treatments, but also to incorporate lung cancer explicitly in national cancer control plans and integrated lung health strategies. That means aligning tobacco control, air quality improvement, and occupational health protections with proactive lung cancer risk reduction.

In regards to early detection, the resolution underscores the importance of cost-effective approaches to diagnosis. For lung cancer, that could mean greater adoption of low-dose CT screening, integration of protocols for the management of incidental nodules, and use of innovative technologies, including AI-based imaging tools, to help identify the disease at earlier, more treatable stages.

Now, let’s turn to another critical piece: care pathways. The resolution’s call for integrated and multidisciplinary services resonates strongly with lung cancer priorities. That includes developing or updating clear care pathways from primary care through to tertiary centers, ensuring patients have access to the right specialists, and embedding services like smoking cessation into screening programs. It also means designing systems that are ready to incorporate new, validated treatments as the evidence base evolves.

And while much of the resolution speaks to broad lung health needs, it also addresses areas especially relevant to lung cancer advocacy, such as reducing stigma, improving data collection, and building workforce capacity. National cancer registries that include staging data can help inform policy, track outcomes, and guide resource allocation.

So, what happens next? For the lung cancer community, the resolution can serve as both a policy mandate and an advocacy tool. It offers a framework to engage governments, push for lung cancer–specific targets within broader lung health plans, and promote collaboration across oncology, respiratory medicine, public health, and patient advocacy.

The ultimate goal is to make sure this high-level commitment translates into concrete action by way of programs that detect lung cancer earlier, ensure timely access to high-quality care, and close equity gaps between regions and income levels.

Through collaboration between policymakers, clinicians, researchers, and patient advocates, we can turn the commitments in this resolution into tangible, measurable improvements in how we prevent, detect, and treat lung cancer worldwide.

This has been an AudioAbstract for Project Oncology, and I’m Ryan Quigley. To access this and other episodes in our series, visit ReachMD.com, where you can Be Part of the Knowledge. Thanks for listening!

Reference:

World Health Organization. Integrated approach to lung health: prevention, diagnosis and treatment of lung diseases to contribute to universal health coverage. WHA78.5. Published June 3, 2025. Accessed August 14, 2025. https://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA78/A78_R5-en.pdf