Lung Cancer Awareness Month 2026: what are the risks, and who should get screened?

Lung cancer causes more deaths in the United States than any other cancer, yet the one screening test shown to lower those deaths reaches only a small share of the people who qualify for it. Lung Cancer Awareness Month, observed throughout November, exists to close that gap. The 2026 observance centers on three practical messages: understand personal risk, ask a clinician about screening, and recognize the role research plays in how lung cancer is found and treated.

What is Lung Cancer Awareness Month?

Lung Cancer Awareness Month is a national health observance held every November. Advocacy groups, hospitals, and cancer centers use the month to share information about prevention, early detection, and research, and to push back against the stigma long attached to the disease.

The symbol of the month is a white ribbon. A survivor-founded initiative launched in 2020 popularized the ribbon to show that lung cancer can affect anyone with lungs, not only people who smoked.

Two dates within the month carry specific calls to action in 2026:

• National Lung Cancer Screening Day, Saturday, November 14: a coalition of lung health, cancer, and radiology organizations encourages screening centers to open on a weekend so more eligible adults can get checked.
• A national quit-smoking day, Thursday, November 19: held every year on the third Thursday of November, it encourages people who smoke to quit for a day or make a plan to quit for good.

Like the October breast cancer observance, the month links awareness to early detection and research.

Who is at risk for lung cancer?

Lung cancer begins when cells in the lungs grow out of control and form a tumor, a mass of abnormal cells that can spread to other parts of the body. Doctors group lung cancer into two main types. Non-small cell lung cancer accounts for about eight in ten cases and includes adenocarcinoma, the most common subtype, which starts in mucus-making cells. Small cell lung cancer makes up roughly one in eight cases, tends to grow and spread faster, and is closely tied to smoking.

Common risk factors

Smoking remains the leading cause, linked to roughly eight to nine in ten lung cancers. Quitting at any age lowers the risk. Other established risk factors include:

• Radon, an invisible, odorless radioactive gas that seeps into homes from the soil and is the second leading cause of lung cancer overall
• Secondhand smoke
• Workplace exposures such as asbestos, diesel exhaust, and certain metals
• Outdoor air pollution
• Prior radiation therapy to the chest
• A family history of lung cancer

Radon deserves particular attention: federal environmental officials estimate that nearly one in fifteen U.S. homes has elevated levels, and only a test can tell. Tobacco exposure also drives cancers of the head and neck, where reducing exposure is likewise a central prevention message.

Lung cancer in people who never smoked

An estimated one in ten to one in five people diagnosed with lung cancer in the United States never smoked. In this group, the disease is more often adenocarcinoma, appears more often in women, and frequently involves specific gene changes in the tumor. Radon is the leading cause in this group, and for many people no single cause is found.

Warning signs

Early lung cancer usually causes no symptoms, which is one reason it is often found late. When symptoms appear, they can include:

• A cough that does not go away or gets worse
• Coughing up blood or blood-streaked mucus
• Chest pain
• Shortness of breath
• Hoarseness
• Repeated bouts of pneumonia or bronchitis
• Unexplained weight loss or fatigue

Most of these symptoms have common, noncancerous causes, such as infections, allergies, or asthma. A symptom that lasts for several weeks, keeps returning, or gets worse is the pattern that warrants evaluation by a clinician.

Who should get screened for lung cancer?

Lung cancer screening uses a low-dose CT scan (LDCT), a quick chest scan that takes detailed pictures of the lungs with much less radiation than a standard CT scan. It can find small spots, called nodules, before symptoms start. Large randomized trials in the United States and Europe found that yearly screening of high-risk adults reduced lung cancer deaths compared with chest X-rays or no screening.

Eligibility depends on age and smoking history, measured in pack-years. A pack-year equals smoking one pack of cigarettes a day for one year, so one pack a day for 20 years and two packs a day for 10 years both equal 20 pack-years. Current recommendations from the federal preventive services panel call for yearly screening for adults who:

• Are 50 to 80 years old
• Have a smoking history of at least 20 pack-years
• Currently smoke or quit within the past 15 years

A national cancer organization updated its own guideline in 2023 to drop the years-since-quitting limit, so people who quit more than 15 years ago may also qualify under that guidance. Medicare covers yearly screening for eligible people aged 50 to 77 after a shared decision-making visit, in which the clinician and patient discuss benefits and risks together. Most private plans also cover screening for eligible adults, though details vary by plan.

Screening has trade-offs. Some scans flag spots that turn out not to be cancer, which can lead to more imaging and, occasionally, a biopsy. Screening can also find slow-growing cancers that would never have caused harm, and each scan adds a small radiation dose. For people at high risk, expert panels judge that the benefits outweigh these harms.

Even so, fewer than one in five eligible adults in the United States were screened in the most recent national analysis. Some cancers have no proven screening test at all, and ovarian cancer is one example, which makes the underuse of lung screening a missed opportunity rather than a gap in the science. Screening for people who never smoked is being studied, but no current U.S. guideline recommends it.

How are lung cancer diagnosis and treatment changing?

When imaging finds something suspicious, a biopsy (removal of a small tissue sample for examination under a microscope) confirms whether cancer is present and which type it is. Doctors then determine the stage, which describes how far the cancer has spread: localized (only in the lung), regional (to nearby lymph nodes or tissue), or distant (to faraway organs, also called metastatic).

Stage at diagnosis strongly shapes the outlook. About two in three people whose lung cancer is found while still localized are alive five years later, compared with about one in ten when it has spread to distant organs. Only about a quarter of cases are found at that early stage. These are group figures and cannot predict how any one person will do.

Biomarker testing

For non-small cell lung cancer, doctors increasingly order biomarker testing, which checks tumor tissue or blood for specific gene changes or proteins. Some gene changes, such as those in the EGFR or ALK genes, act like a stuck accelerator that drives the cancer to grow, and medicines designed to target a growing list of these changes now exist. Biomarkers are measurable body signals like these that help match treatment to the tumor. A protein called PD-L1 is also measured to help guide immunotherapy decisions.

Main treatment approaches

Treatment depends on the type, stage, biomarker results, and overall health, and may combine several approaches:

• Surgery to remove the tumor, typically for early-stage disease
• Radiation therapy
• Chemotherapy
• Targeted therapy, which acts on a specific gene change in the tumor
• Immunotherapy, which helps the immune system recognize and attack cancer cells

During 2025 and 2026, United States regulators approved several new targeted medicines for lung cancers with specific gene changes. Some came through accelerated approval, a pathway based on early results that requires further studies to confirm the benefit. These options apply only to people whose tumors carry the matching biomarker, and responses vary from person to person.

How do clinical trials help people with lung cancer?

Nearly every advance described above came from clinical trials, from the screening studies to each newer targeted medicine and immunotherapy. Together with lower smoking rates, these advances have helped lung cancer death rates fall steadily over the past three decades.

Participation remains low. Only a small share of adults with cancer take part in treatment trials, and the main barriers are structural: no suitable trial at the nearby cancer center, strict eligibility criteria, travel distance, and missing test results. When patients are offered a trial, roughly half choose to join, which suggests that access, more than willingness, is the larger obstacle. Black patients and several other groups remain underrepresented in lung cancer research, which limits how well findings apply to everyone affected.

Biomarker testing matters here too. Many lung cancer trials enroll only people whose tumors carry a specific gene change, so complete test results can widen the set of studies a person may qualify for. Questions about risks, benefits, visits, and costs are answered during informed consent, and knowing how to read an informed consent form makes that conversation more productive. Participation is voluntary, and a participant can leave a study at any time.

DecenTrialz is a clinical trial recruitment and pre-screening platform that helps people learn about and connect with relevant studies. A person shares some information about their health, AI-assisted matching surfaces studies that may fit, and a registered nurse reviews the details in a pre-screening conversation before a referral goes to the research site.

Final eligibility determination, informed consent, the study walk-through, and enrollment remain with the authorized research site and study team.

People interested in exploring lung cancer research opportunities can learn more at decentrialz.com.

Frequently asked questions about lung cancer screening and research

Does vaping cause lung cancer?

Researchers have not yet established whether vaping causes lung cancer, because long-term studies in people are still underway. Shorter-term studies show signs of cell and DNA damage, and some recent reviews judge a cancer risk likely. Vaping is not risk-free, and it is not a proven way to lower lung cancer risk.

How can a home be tested for radon?

Short-term radon test kits are sold at hardware stores and online. The kit sits in the lowest lived-in level of the home for a few days and is then mailed to a lab. Federal guidance recommends fixing a home when radon reaches 4 picocuries per liter or higher, typically with a venting system installed by a qualified contractor.

Is lung cancer curable if it is found early?

Lung cancer found at an early stage is more likely to be treated with surgery or radiation intended to remove or destroy it completely, and survival is substantially higher than when the cancer is found late. Outcomes still vary from person to person, and the treating oncologist is the best source for individual expectations.

Will a trial participant get a placebo instead of care?

In cancer trials, a placebo on its own is generally used only when no established option exists. More often, a new study intervention is compared with the current standard of care, or a placebo is added on top of standard care, so participants are not left without care.