COPD Month Offers Time to Reflect on Successes

November 10, 2011

Today COPD has risen to the third leading cause of death in the U.S. That’s up one place in recent years, but even with its increasing prevalence, up to 30% of the U.S. population doesn’t know what COPD is. That was reported in a National Institutes of Health report last year.

As we celebrate COPD Awareness Month and World COPD Day on Nov. 16, the AARC asks you to think about the successes we’ve all shared in this year.

1. Continued support of the Learn More, Breathe Better campaign offered by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.They're looking for your videos, which you can upload direct to their Facebook page.
2. An extraordinary effort in the DRIVE4COPD campaign.
3. Our members engaged in education in their communities over Respiratory Care Week.
4. A special screening and education program were offered at our AARC Congress in Tampa as a community service in the city we were visiting.
5. AARC again attended the annual AARP Life@50 show to provide education and screening.
6. More tools and education were developed for respiratory therapists, with a COPD Educator course launched in 2011 and a new Alpha-1 course about to be made available in January.

“COPD kills more than 120,000 adults each year. That’s one death every four minutes—more than breast cancer and diabetes combined. Yet people go undiagnosed and untreated because they don’t recognize the symptoms,” said James P. Kiley, Ph.D., director of the NHLBI's Division of Lung Diseases.

CDC has also recognized the month in their recent MMWR.

AARC’s commitment to COPD awareness continues and we encourage your participation to patient education and identifying disease in the undiagnosed.