ATS 2026 Features Expert Insight Into Top Thoracic Issues, Including Global Disparities

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, interstitial lung disease, long COVID-19, clean air zones, pulmonary rehabilitation, and global disparities in thoracic care were among the leading topics featured during the American Thoracic Society 2026 International Conference, held May 17-20, 2026, in Orlando, Florida.

The conference featured multiple days full of sessions that focused on various areas in the thoracic space, including a session on May 19 that highlighted the global disparities and social determinants of health that can affect lung function and lung health in different areas. The session featured several experts who discussed how climate change and neighborhoods could affect how lungs develop in children.

Climate Change Introduces Global Disparities in Lung Health

Mary B. Rice, MD, MPH, director of the BIDMC Institute for Lung Health at Harvard University, discussed how climate hazards affect the respiratory system. She pointed out how historical redlining has affected temperature in bigger cities, with some areas being 2.6 degrees warmer in redlined neighborhoods compared with neighborhoods outside of the redlined districts.

“We found that heat waves are associated with more than 70,000 excess deaths over a nearly 20-year period from cardiovascular, respiratory, [and] neurologic causes. Those associations were greatest in high-poverty neighborhoods. They were also reduced in neighborhoods with abundant green space,” Rice explained.

Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) also were found to struggle in higher temperatures, and climate change can even affect air quality in the future. Interventions to reduce greenhouse gases, such as those that were done in Atlanta for the 1996 Olympic Games, can work to reduce the number of asthma visits in an area, but this is only effective if done on a permanent basis rather than for a specific event. Wildfire smoke can also be an issue moving forward as wildfire season affects more areas of the country. From a regulatory standpoint, said Rice, the wildfire smoke is undoing most of the progress and “since 2016, all that progress, even on the East Coast, has slowed or reversed as a result of the wildfire smoke because that smoke travels really far… Counties with higher social vulnerability have higher wildfire smoke attributable deaths.”

Rice ended her talk by comparing smoking with burning fossil fuels. “They both cause mortality, lung cancer, both clearly associated with asthma and COPD exacerbation…yet in both cases, powerful economic interests have sown doubt about the validity of the science showing these harms,” she said. “I don’t think anybody doubts that cigarettes cause them lung cancer, but in the case of fossil fuel use, we haven’t won that battle yet.”

Use of Pulmonary Rehabilitation Outside of COPD

The use of pulmonary rehabilitation in other disease states was also touched on during the conference. The session, which also featured a patient’s testimony on how pulmonary rehabilitation helped her with her pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), collected expert insight on how pulmonary rehab can help multiple people.

Dmitry Rozenberg, MD, PhD, a respirologist at University Health Network, expanded on the patient testimony and focused on how pulmonary rehab can help those with PAH. These patients have increased cardiac output that is related to right ventricular dysfunction and can progress over time and reduce peak oxygen. Skeletal muscle dysfunction is also possible due to this loss of oxygen capacity.

“We are really trying to break this vicious cycle where there’s the fatigue and exertional intolerance and skeletal muscle dysfunction, and so with inactivity, those 3 pillars actually become worse,” he said.

As of current guidelines, published in 2023, there is a low recommendation for pulmonary rehabilitation for those with PAH, primarily based on previous studies. Rozenberg demonstrated in several studies that supervised rehab was able to increase 6-minute walking distance and increase quality of life in patients living with PAH. Adverse events were also not more frequent in patients undergoing rehab compared with those who were not, indicating that there is no significant downside to rehab in these patients.

“Future considerations should focus on evaluation of optimal physiological tracks in the home environment and maintenance down the road, as we know some of the benefits get lost in 6 months if these individuals are not participating in the operation,” Rozenberg concluded.

Overall, ATS 2026 covered a variety of different areas in pulmonary and thoracic health, highlighting areas that require more attention and more areas that have seen growth in the past year. The conference continues to be a key place for continued education on the latest in thoracic health.