Healthy Lungs for Life visits local schools in Vienna

The Healthy Lungs for Life campaign focusses on 5 key themes for how people can keep their lungs healthy and help reduce lung disease worldwide. Sharing these messages with children and young people is crucial as early life behaviours influence our lung health in later life. As part of the ERS Congress in Vienna, the Healthy Lungs for Life team visited schools to give children the chance to have a lung function test and to host lessons around maintaining good lung health.

The topic of lung health is often overlooked in mainstream education. However, as the lungs are developing in childhood and adolescence, they are at increased risk of disease. The Healthy Lungs for Life for Schools initiative encourages pupils to make healthy decisions and raises awareness of how they can improve their lung health. 

Arriving in a yellow school bus, the team were joined by medically trained volunteers who helped deliver lung tests to 190 pupils over the 2 days. Lung function testing is a great way to help pupils focus on the function of their own lungs. By looking at the results, they are able to better visualise what it is their lungs are actually doing within their body. Pupils were also educated on factors influencing lung health with a focus on the use of tobacco products and the impact of air pollution. Activities were age-relevant and consisted of the pupils completing a lung activity sheet and testing out the Healthy Lungs For Life interactive game.

Pupils were also taught how to develop their advocacy skills. This consisted of either drawing our ‘healthy planet’ or writing a letter to a politician asking them to prioritise lung health. Many high-quality pieces of advocacy work were produced and the Healthy Lungs for Life team plans to create a display to show in the European Parliament later this year.  

Teachers were greatly impressed with the campaign’s ability to increase pupils’ understanding around lung health and the Healthy Lungs for Life campaign is excited to visit more schools across Europe in the future.