Welcome

On behalf of Lung Foundation Australia, we warmly invite you to be part of the 10th Australian Lung Cancer Conference to be held in Adelaide, South Australia from 19 - 21 February 2025. As Australia’s largest multi-disciplinary lung cancer conference, we are excited to bring together health care professionals from across the continuum of care to collaborate and build on the opportunities created at ALCC 2023.

The conference theme, Evolution and Revolution in Lung Cancer, was chosen in recognition of the historic significance of 2025 – the year that a National Lung Cancer Screening Program commences.

The Australian Government’s $267 million investment in the National Lung Cancer Screening Program is a once in a generation opportunity to revolutionise lung cancer detection, treatment, and survivorship. We congratulate the Government, Cancer Australia and the Department of Health and Aging in the work completed in preparation for Australia’s first new screening program in over 20 years.

The opportunities presented to the lung cancer sector to reshape the ‘stigma’ laced narrative of lung cancer, to focus on communities of highest unmet need, particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and to detect earlier and faster are exciting. Yet many will ask ‘Are we ready?’, Health and Hospital Systems are behemoths, and policy into practice is challenging. Is our workforce poised and appropriately resourced to seize the opportunity that screening presents, and how do we prepare the primary care sector for its key role in encouraging uptake of the screening program?

Do we have the infrastructure, policies, and settings in data and monitoring right to ensure every patient has a gold standard of care? Are we bold enough to look at new surgical techniques, immunotherapy for early stage disease, more sophisticated systems and understanding of the needs of patients living longer with lung cancer?

Significant government investment in the new National Tobacco and Vaping Strategy has shone a spotlight on lung health. We are doubling our resolve to prevent history from repeating and allowing tobacco and vaping companies to create a new generation addicted to nicotine. With smoking cessation back on the agenda, how can we leverage the screening opportunity to drive down tobacco use?

Federal, South Australian and Queensland Governments are working with Lung Foundation Australia to pilot specialist Lung Cancer Nurses and we are excited about the results and the immediate impact on quality of care.

ALCC 2025 is about challenging the status quo and shining a light on lung cancer whilst the spotlight is firmly fixed on Australia’s leading cause of cancer death. In 2023, 550 delegates joined over 30 sponsors and partners in a shared understanding that lung cancer is more than any one speciality - it is a multidisciplined team of health care professions, researchers, policy makers, patient and carer advocates working as one to bring about change.

This conference will be the key event, just three months prior to the launch of the National Lung Cancer Screening Program, and as such it presents a unique opportunity to hear from international and national thought leaders and policy makers to answer the question: ‘Are we Ready?’

The Lung Foundation Australia team and our partners look forward to seeing you in person in Adelaide.

A/Prof Lucy Morgan

Chairperson

Lung Foundation Australia

Mark Brooke

Chief Executive Officer

Lung Foundation Australia