As life slowly goes back to normal for the many, I look back at what has been an extraordinary time for our federation with some major projects completed amid the difficulties of the past year and a half. We like our national members have worked closely with clinicians to provide support & advice to our patient communities during Covid-19 ensuring that pulmonary fibrosis patients were highlighted as priorities for vaccination and changing our organisations to reflect the new virtual needs of patients & their loved ones.

In this edition of our newsletter, we reflect on some of what our federation achieved in the year to date such as successfully hosting the 1^st ever European Pulmonary Fibrosis Patient Summit but looking forward there is always more to be done and in July our membership will join to together virtually for two days of meetings at our 7^th Annual General Assembly. At this meeting we will discuss the many unmet needs of pulmonary fibrosis patients across Europe and no doubt as always, the lack of awareness by both the public and some professionals & policy makers around the disease will be a common theme.

So, I invite you all now, ready for this September to join with us, our members and patient groups around the world in making a special effort to raise awareness during Global Pulmonary Fibrosis Awareness Month, so please follow our social media channels for more details of our 2021 campaign. Full details of what we have done and what we hope to do this year which can also be found on our website www.eu-ipff.org

I take this opportunity to thank all those involved in our patient summit, our webinar series, patient advocate training and the numerous committees, advisory boards, research projects & funding submissions that the federation has been involved in and look forward to everyone’s continued support as we continue our advocacy, awareness, and policy work for the rest of 2021.

Happy summer to all.

Steve Jones

Every September the Federation joins with its members and other groups around the world to raise awareness of Pulmonary Fibrosis, its signs and symptoms and its impact on patients and their loved ones.

Despite its severe nature and relatively collective high incidence the various diseases that make up Pulmonary Fibrosis remain virtually unknown to the general population.

Since 2017 the EU-IPFF has sought to provide a unifying message to its members to use on top of their own events and activities

This year we will continue to use the successful #MyPFstory & #CurePF branding. As an example, please see a video from the previous campaign: Alice's story. We are currently working on this year's campaign and will communicate about it when we get closer to September. So please keep an eye of our website (EU-IPFF.org) and follow our social media (find the icons at the bottom of this newsletter) for more details to support us this September.

Global Pulmonary Fibrosis Month runs for the entire month of September whilst the 18^th to the 25^th of September has been specifically designated IPF Awareness Week.