National Institutes of Health Launches COPD Action Plan

13 Jul National Institutes of Health Launches COPD Action Plan

Sixteen million Americans have been diagnosed with COPD and it’s believed that millions more have the disease without realizing it. COPD is the third leading cause of death in the United States. Recently, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), working in collaboration with stakeholders from across the COPD community, released a COPD National Action Plan. The purpose is to provide a unified framework to guide medical care providers and others involved in dealing with the disease. The overall goal is to reduce the burden of COPD for sufferers and care providers alike.

Elements of the NIH COPD Action Plan

The Action Plan addresses the needs of both patients and the general public, lays out guidelines for health care practice and delivery, and examines research potential and policy implications. In total, five main goals are set forth, each addressing a different aspect of COPD. Here, courtesy of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, are those goals:

The Five Goals of the COPD Action Plan

• Goal 1: Empower people with COPD, their families, and caregivers to recognize and reduce the burden of COPD.
• Goal 2: Improve the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and management of COPD by improving the quality of care delivered across the health care continuum.
• Goal 3: Collect, analyze, report, and disseminate COPD-related public health data that drive change and track progress.
• Goal 4: Increase and sustain research to better understand the prevention, pathogenesis, diagnosis, treatment, and management of COPD.

Goal 5: Translate national policy, educational, and program recommendations into research and public health care actions.

Click here learn more about the plan and ways you can get involved in implementing it successfully.