Tonya Winders says our lungs are like the Rodney Dangerfield of major organs. 

“Lungs don’t get the respect they deserve,” said Winders, who is the president of the Global Allergy & Airways Patient Platform. “We take breath for granted.” 

As a refresher, Dangerfield, the infamous comedian and actor known for saying, “I don’t get no respect.” 

But for Winders, allergies, asthma and anything attacking our lungs are serious issues that need attention. She spoke at the ATS International Conference in San Diego that ran from May 17 to the 22nd and told Surfers & Chess Players that part of her role is to educate and make sure allergy, asthma and people with lung health issues are represented.  

Sometimes getting people to understand even the basics is challenging. Just one in three policymakers know that COPD is a lung condition and the third leading cause of death in the world, she said. And these are leaders who make decisions on how billions of dollars in healthcare funds are spent. 

During the conference, Winders addressed other major topics, such as climate change. About 25 million Americans suffer from asthma and the number continues to rise. 

“Climate change is producing longer, stronger pollen seasons and more extreme weather events,” she said. “And so, we’re seeing more asthma related to those types of things, and exacerbations that are more tied to air quality and stronger pollen type of exposures.” 

Another topic Winders addressed at the conference: the global push for “greener inhalers and more planet friendly policies.” 

Europe produces about 70% of all inhalers, she said, and has passed regulations to move from inhalers that use hydrofluoroalkane or HFA propellants to a greener emission propellant by 2028. “The clock is ticking,” she said. 

The key is to encourage people to take their medicine and stay out of the hospital because that is where emissions are generated, in the hospital. Meantime, switching to a new inhaler isn’t easy. Protecting the planet with green inhalers “comes with some challenges because patients typically don’t use their inhalers correctly,” Winders said.  

 She also spoke about the changing profile of COPD. 

 It used to be that we thought 80 to 90% of COPD was due to smoking, but biomass fuels, secondhand smoke and poor air quality are making a major difference in COPD patients’ lives. “The major difference is the reversibility. Asthma is reversible, COPD is irreversible,” Winders said.  

Lung health became personal for Winders, a mother of five grown children, when one of her daughters was rushed to the emergency room because she was having difficulty breathing. 

Winders remembers the day vividly even though it was 20 years ago. She and her family had been spending time with friends while the children were having fun playing with kittens.  

“At 2 o’clock in the morning I hear a very high pitch wheezing sound coming from her room,” Winders recalled. “And she was in a full-blown asthma attack. It was very scary. We had to rush her to the emergency room in an ambulance, and she had to receive emergency treatment.” 

 “It was the first time that I really came to understand that one of my children had this chronic disease called asthma and the risk of losing one of them as a result,” she said. 

Most people who have asthma can manage it but there are still people with severe asthma that medical experts don’t exactly know how they are going to keep healthy. 

 “We have very innovative and promising treatments with biologics in the severe asthma space,” Winders said.  “But unfortunately, only one in five people who could benefit from a biologic are on a biologic today. So, we still have a lot of access barriers and challenges to getting the right treatment to the right person at the right time.” 

Unlike blood pressure, heart rate or diabetes there is also no way to easily measure a person’s vital signs to understand their lung health. 

“We don’t have that kind of biomarker,” she said.  

Spirometry lung function testing is the gold standard for diagnosis and monitoring of chronic respiratory diseases, but it is not available in most primary care settings, and it is also not always reimbursed at a rate that makes it feasible for providers to use consistently. 

Said Winders, “I think that we have some work to do.”