Join us for #LCSM Chat on Twitter this Thursday, November 4, at 5pm PT, 8pm ET as we celebrate the amazing growth of lung cancer advocacy over the past ten years. Please share to spread the word.

November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month, also known as LCAM.  The first Lung Cancer Awareness Day in the United States was launch on November 14, 1998. It intentionally coincided with the American Cancer Society’s annual Great American Smokeout in hopes that positive attention on lung cancer patients and research would counteract the stigma associated with the disease. The first Lung Cancer Awareness Month (LCAM) happened two years later in November 2000. Ten years after that, organized LCAM events such as “Shine a Light on Lung Cancer” were slowly spreading around the world with support from lung cancer nonprofits, but they still struggled to attract participants, sponsors, and news coverage. The sad reality was that lung cancer in 2010 had very few survivors or family members who possessed the energy, good health, and motivation to become public advocates for the lung cancer community.

Over the past decade, however, things changed rapidly. Breakthroughs in lung cancer research and patient care gave us targeted therapies, immunotherapy, lung cancer screening, and increasing survival statistics. Patients and family members became more engaged in advocacy. Lung cancer online communities and Facebook groups proliferated. The hashtags #LCSM (lung cancer social media), #LungCancerAwarenessMonth, and #LCAM gained traction on Twitter.  The media published more stories about lung cancer patients and treatments.

On Thursday, November 4, 2021, the lung cancer community will gather on #LCSM Chat to discuss the topic “Lung cancer advocacy: what a difference a decade makes!”  Our moderator Janet Freeman-Daily (@JFreemanDaily) will guide us in exploring the evolution of lung cancer advocacy over the past 10 years using the following topics:

• T1: What did lung cancer advocacy look like when you joined the lung cancer community? Who was involved? What was being done? What activity was visible outside the LC community?
• T2: What factors drove or contributed to the evolution of lung cancer advocacy over the past 10 years?
• T3: What does lung cancer advocacy look like now? Do advocacy activities differ by type of stakeholders?  Has public visibility of LC advocacy increased?
• T4: What changes would you like to see in lung cancer advocacy in the next 10 years, and how can the lung cancer community help make it happen?

Please join us, and bring your experiences and wisdom! Remember to include #LCSM in ALL your tweets so the other chat participants can see them. You can read a primer on participating in the chat here. We look forward to chatting with you!