— A message from our President & CEO —
International Women’s Day is a time for us to recognize the many ways that women, girls, and gender diverse people drive respiratory innovation and enrich the Lung Health Foundation community.
Without you, there might not be a Lung Health Foundation community at all.
Your great-great grandmother may have known us by our founding name, the Canadian Association for the Prevention of Consumption and Other Forms of Tuberculosis. In 1908, an army of CAPCOFT volunteers – most of them women – banded together to raise a then-unthinkable sum of $7,300 for urgently needed community tuberculosis infrastructure. That’s the equivalent of almost $200,000 in 2024, an investment that kickstarted more than a century of work to meet the evolving lung health needs of Canadians as the Ontario Lung Association and now the Lung Health Foundation.
Their passion made a real, tangible difference, just like yours does today.
Today, women touch all our areas of impact. You are advocates, ambassadors, researchers, caregivers, spokespeople, volunteers, medical experts, program leaders, fundraisers, peer support providers, and awareness-spreaders. You’ve worked alongside us for more than a century, and you deserve to be acknowledged for your hard work.
This year’s International Women’s Day theme, “Invest in women: Accelerate Progress”, is a reminder that gender equality is one of the most effective ways to build healthier, more prosperous, and more inclusive communities.
Like the volunteers coming together to accelerate progress in 1908, so too will we come together in 2024 and beyond to tackle contemporary lung health equity issues – like the emergence of COPD as a growing women’s health concern.
Sincerely,
Jessica Buckley
President and CEO, Lung Health Foundation