The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) has released the COPD National Action Plan, which calls for multidisciplinary, national guidelines for the treatment and management of the disease.
"COPD is the third leading cause of death in this country. It is right behind heart disease and cancer," Kiley said, adding that unlike those diseases, COPD prevalence and deaths continue to rise.
"Here in the United States, 6.5% of the population has COPD. That amounts to about 16 million people," he said. "Look around this room. One in five people over age 45 has this disease. You know someone who has it. You may have it and not even know it."
Meilan Han, MD, of the Women's Respiratory Health Program at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, cited common barriers to the delivery of adequate COPD treatment and support, including lack of access to providers who understand the disease, lack of access to affordable medications, and lack of access to nearby treatment centers.
She added that the stigma surrounding COPD, which is largely a disease of smokers and former smokers, compounds the problem.
"This is a group of patients who have assumed that this is what they have to live with, and they don't speak out for themselves," she said. "What is clear is that we as society can no longer afford to brush this under the table and ignore this problem when it is the third leading cause of death in the United States."
She said it is important to challenge the misperception that COPD is a disease that only occurs in elderly men who smoked for decades.
"We have a lot of young individuals and a lot of women [with COPD]," she said. "These are people who need and want to be active members of society."