Meet Your COPD Foundation Captains!

Sitka, AK

As a respiratory therapist and Alaska’s first State Captain, I hope to advocate for the COPD community by recruiting volunteers and new state captains. Alaska is a large state with many different communities and cultures. My experience as a respiratory therapist in Alaska will enable me to promote awareness among our state legislators, healthcare professionals, and patients.

As a COPD advocate, I currently live on an island in southeast Alaska and see the need for promoting COPD education with an emphasis on COPD Patient Action Plans. In our remote villages, when a COPD exacerbation occurs, many times the patient is medically flown out to a larger city for a higher-level of care. By encouraging early diagnosis, education, and treatment, this will have a potential impact on the state of Alaska by decreasing air transfers, earlier tobacco cessation, decreased hospital admissions, and reduction of patient care costs.

My vision for Alaska is to create an atmosphere encompassing COPD education programs that include youth education on the dangers of tobacco and e-cigarette use, providing resources for early diagnosis, and improving patient knowledge of their disease.