Lung Health

Welcome to our section relating to lung health – we hope you find it useful.

It contains articles published in our monthly DDN magazine, alongside reports, research and contributions that add to our knowledge bank.

Fifty years ago, more than half of men in the UK smoked, along with 41 per cent of women. Now vaping looks set to overtake smoking for the first time. But vaping remains controversial. While Public Health England (PHE) has stated that it is 95 per cent less harmful than smoking tobacco, the World Health Organization (WHO)’s position is that ‘strong decisive action is needed to prevent the uptake of e-cigarettes’.

The public is still confused. A government survey of more than 12,000 people found that just under 40 per cent of smokers thought vaping was ‘as or more risky’ than smoking, prompting ASH to issue a ‘myth buster’ to challenge ‘common misrepresentations of the evidence’.

The ‘alarming’ growth in the number of young people vaping has prompted calls for urgent intervention, and the tobacco and vapes bill includes proposals to prevent them from being able to buy tobacco at age 15 or younger, and restrict their access to attractively packaged and flavoured vapes. Lack of funding certainty has been hanging over ‘stop smoking’ services at risk, but new legislation would also allocate an additional £70m of support.

While monitoring what’s happening in the UK, we are also keen to learn and share practice, research, and discussion from around the world. Articles examining public health strategies in different countries have found a disjointed approach to nutrition, tobacco control, and other public health issues, with opportunities for multi-stakeholder collaboration. 

This section is regularly updated with the tag ‘lung health’, as we aim to build up a useful resource.

We hope you find it interesting – and please remember that your contributions and feedback are always welcome!