1904–1918: Founding The organization was founded in 1904 to fight
tuberculosis (TB) as the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis (NASPT) by
Edward Livingston Trudeau, Robert Hall Babcock, Henry Martyn Hall,
Lawrence Flick, and
S. Adolphus Knopf. Earlier in 1892, Flick had founded the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Tuberculosis, the world's first society dedicated to the preventing TB. In 1907, the Lung Association began their
Christmas Seal campaign to raise money for a small TB sanatorium in Delaware.
Emily Bissell, a Red Cross volunteer at the time, created holiday seals to sell at the post office for a penny a piece. By the end of her fundraising campaign, she had raised more than ten times the amount needed to save the sanatorium, and the tradition of Christmas Seals was launched.
1918–1973 The NASPT was renamed the National Tuberculosis Association (NTA) in 1918, and then the National Tuberculosis and Respiratory Disease Association (NTRDA) in 1968; it adopted its current name in 1973.
1973–2018 The association is a defender of the
Clean Air Act. In 1978,
Ethelene Crockett became the first woman and first African-American woman appointed president of the organization. In October 2018, the association launched its school-based initiative, "Yoga Power", a program designed to increase awareness of the importance of lung health, at Woodward Elementary School in Delaware, Ohio. ==Logo and tagline==