Overview
- The Oscar winner introduced the initiative on Jan. 28 and discussed it in interviews with People and on NBC’s Today.
- The campaign spotlights idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis as a progressive, terminal interstitial lung disease that is frequently misdiagnosed.
- Dern says her mother’s illness was initially mistaken for conditions like pneumonia before imaging revealed scarring consistent with IPF.
- She recounts working with a pulmonologist on medications and short, graded walks that helped sustain Ladd’s function and inspired their 2023 memoir, Honey, Baby, Mine.
- Ladd lived more than seven years after a three- to six-month prognosis and openly shared her experience in rehab groups, which Dern cites as the model for providing resources to families.