Living with Stage 4 Lung Cancer, she is turning her fight into a campaign for clean air

A never-smoker who has lived with ALK-positive lung cancer for four-and-a-half years and a former NITI Aayog public health professional, Urvashi Prasad is campaigning to spotlight the health toll of air pollution and push for stronger action

Urvashi Prasad is campaigning to spotlight the health toll of air pollution and push for stronger action.

8 min readNov 12, 2026 07:33 AM IST First published on: Nov 12, 2026 at 07:33 AM IST

At 35, public health professional Urvashi Prasad was confronted with a life-changing diagnosis: stage 4 lung cancer. A non-smoker who had always been physically fit and active, she had little reason to suspect that she was seriously ill. Four-and-a-half years on, she continues to live with the disease, navigating daily medication, debilitating side effects, ballooning costs and a gnawing uncertainty. Yet, even as she manages her own illness, she is certain about her crusade for the right to breathe clean air. “I was told that chronic exposure to Delhi pollution could have been a trigger, like it has for many non-smoking young women across Indian cities. At least our campaign can prevent this spiral some day,” she says.

A public health professional who worked with NITI Aayog in Delhi, Urvashi has channelled her experience into establishing the PAVANA Centre for Air Pollution and Environmental Health and is now based in Mumbai. Her concern is personal as well as professional. While it is not possible to establish that air pollution caused her cancer, growing evidence links exposure to fine particulate matter with lung cancer, including among people who have never smoked. She believes that years of breathing polluted air may have contributed to her vulnerability, and wants the health consequences of that exposure to receive far greater attention. “People can make healthy lifestyle choices but they cannot choose the air they breathe. And that has to be tackled with a commitment to implementing policies and actionable behaviour changes,” she says.