WASHINGTON – The National Institutes of Health on Monday released its first COPD National Action Plan, a five-point initiative to reduce the burden of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and increase research into prevention and treatment.
On the same day, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and other supporters of the plan described its evolution and why they thought the plan’s implementation was important.
Dr. James Kiley
The plan’s five goals are:
- Empower people with COPD, their families, and caregivers to recognize and reduce the burden of COPD.
- Improve the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and management of COPD by increasing the quality of care delivered across the health care continuum.
- Collect, analyze, report, and disseminate COPD-related public health data that drive change and track progress.
- Increase and sustain research to better understand the prevention, pathogenesis, diagnosis, treatment, and management of COPD.
- Translate national policy, educational, and program recommendations into research and public health care actions.
“Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is the third-leading cause of death in this country; it’s just behind heart disease and cancer,” Dr. Kiley noted. “What’s really disappointing and discouraging is it’s the only cause of death in this country where the numbers are not declining.”
COPD “got the attention of Congress a number of years ago,” he added. “They encouraged the National Institutes of Health to work with the community stakeholders and other federal agencies to develop a national action plan to respond to the growing burden of this disease.”
COPD’s stakeholder community, the federal government, and other partners worked together to develop a set of core goals that the National Action Plan would address, Dr. Kiley continued. “It was meant to obtain the broadest amount of input possible so that we could get it right from the start.”
Another of the plan’s advocates, MeiLan Han, MD, medical director of the women’s respiratory health program at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, illustrated the need to increase and sustain COPD research related to the disease.
“I see the suffering and disease toll that this takes on my patients, and I can’t convince you enough of the level of frustration that I have as a physician in not being able to provide the level of care that I want to be able to provide,” said Dr. Han, who served as a panelist at the press conference.
“We face some serious barriers to being able to provide adequate care for patients,” she added. Those barriers include lack of access to providers who are knowledgeable about COPD, as well as lack of access to affordable and conveniently located pulmonology rehabilitation and education materials. From a research standpoint, Dr. Han added, medicine still doesn’t know enough about the disease. “We certainly have good treatments, but we need better treatments,” she said.
“What’s clear is that we as society can no longer afford to brush this under the table and ignore this problem,” Dr. Han added.
The National Action Plan and information about how to get involved are available at copd.nih.gov.