The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute is hosting the virtual workshop "Defining Lung Health Through the Lifespan" on March 4–5, 2026.

The lung provides essential life-sustaining gas exchange, protection against environmental pathogens, and the ability to generate homeostatic responses to physiological imbalance. Lung structure, functions, and capacity change across the lifespan, and these changes may constitute normal developmental and aging processes, or they may be an indication of pathobiology. For decades, lung health has been defined merely as the absence of lung disease. The lack of a definition for lung health before disease develops has delayed clinical intervention to treat patients, as they are assumed to have healthy lungs until they present with respiratory symptoms or meet a pre-defined disease threshold. Therefore, identifying clear metrics for lung health are needed as a cornerstone to define optimal lung development, prevention strategies, and treatment goals.

The objective of this workshop is to bring together experts in basic and clinical research to understand and begin to define lung health through the lifespan, and to identify gap areas where research and evidence are still needed to support, develop, or refine that definition. We will be addressing the following questions: what is normal, healthy, or steady-state in the context of basic biology, early development, and through maturation and aging; whether past standards of lung health are still relevant; and what advances are needed to reflect a range of healthy lung functionalities and phenotypes.

Workshop Co-chairs:

Stephanie Christenson, M.D., University of California, San Francisco
Ravi Kalhan, M.D., Northwestern University

Contact:

For questions or to request reasonable accommodations to participate in this event, please email Julia D'Albora at julia.d'albora@nih.gov.