Sydney Barned Wants You to Join Her at the Lung Cancer Voices Summit

Sydney Barned, MD, has marked the date on her calendar: March 3–5, 2024. That’s when lung cancer advocates nationwide will unite in D.C. for GO2’s next Lung Cancer Voices Summit. She’s passionate about advocacy and wants more people, especially younger women, to join her in telling their stories.  

Barned, a hospitalist at Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis, MD, was 33 years old and in her medical residency when she was diagnosed with stage 4 (IV) ALK-positive lung cancer. She said the Voices Summit always reminds her that she is not alone in this fight.  

“It’s good for the people who just got diagnosed, or who are only one year in, to see people who have been there 10 years and are…still living their lives,” said Barned. “It’s a good way to build community and let people know that, just because you have this diagnosis, it’s not a death sentence.” 

Moreover, “fighting for yourself and future patients is [an] honor.” Barned noted that attending the Voices Summit and sharing her story with elected officials benefits herself and many others, now and into the future.  

Cracking the code on women and lung cancer 

As part of every Voices Summit, participants meet with members of Congress and their staff to personalize lung cancer for the people who make federal funding decisions. GO2 for Lung Cancer has been a vocal advocate for more annual federal research dollars for lung cancer—and for a national focus on women and lung cancer—because the federal government is the largest funder of cancer research. 

“One reason I continue attending the Summit is because research is so important,” said Barned. “It’s important with regards to lung cancer and the treatments we receive—and even just figuring out why lung cancer is still so prevalent even though people are slowing down on how much they smoke. It’s [also] important in [understanding] why young women are getting lung cancer at such alarming rates, especially young women who don’t smoke.” 

In fact, a new study found that lung cancer is more common in women than in men ages 35–54. These statistics are part of why Barned wants to encourage younger women to attend the Summit and make their voices heard.  

“I think we need to engage the younger community more,” said Barned. “I know that a lot of young people who I talk to feel a little forgotten. We need to reach out to let them know that their voices are important. We want to hear their voices—and have them know that their voices will be heard.” 

Finally, Barned stressed that building awareness is not an end in itself. “Building awareness is about pushing the pages forward so that lung cancer can be the chronic illness that we want it to be. But, first, we need the research, and we need the treatments to make this possible.”