Ted Koppel and Wife Grace Anne Dorney Koppel Open 11th Clinic Offering Life-Saving COPD Treatment Experience.

• Ted Koppel and his wife, Grace Anne Dorney Koppel, have opened their eleventh pulmonary rehabilitation clinic to help people with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)
• Grace Anne was diagnosed with COPD in 2001 and told she only had a few years to live.
• Their clinics focus on underserved areas where COPD rates are high – and as Grace Anne says, more needs to be done as COPD is the leading cause of death in the US.

Iconic journalist Ted Koppel and his wife, Grace Anne Dorney Koppel, have opened their eleventh clinic – part of their ongoing mission through the Dorney-Koppel Foundation to help communities in need where cases of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) are high.

And for Koppels, the fight against COPD is personal; in 2001, Grace Anne was diagnosed with progressive lung disease.

But before she was given the grim diagnosis, Ted tells PEOPLE her doctor told her to “lose ten pounds, and you’ll feel like a new woman. It was hard to get past that.” .”

It’s a sign of how misunderstood COPD is — even though it’s one of the leading causes of death in the United States.

The US Centers for Disease Control says 16 million people have chronic lung disease – and “many don’t know they have it.”

When Grace Anne was finally diagnosed with COPD, she says she was told, “You have to start making final preparations. You have 3 to 5 years left to live.”

“I got such a bad review, but at the same time I got a great offer,” she tells PEOPLE. “I was given a prescription for a lung transplant.”

As he explains, pulmonary rehab is an independent program.

He says: “The main factor that builds it is exercise, but it also includes proper nutrition, how to take medicine correctly, how to recognize a lung attack and how to respond.”

And as Ted points out, “Anything that seems as simple as an inhaler needs to be demonstrated. One of our pulmonologists told us about a patient who had and inhaler and said he was doing nothing – ” [because] sprinkle it on his arm.”

Their first clinic was actually a birthday present to Ted’s Grace Anne, saying, “It was a birthday with zero – and zero wasn’t the first number.”

And now, access to pulmonary rehab care is “an extraordinary gift to people who have been given very little hope,” she tells PEOPLE. Since opening that first clinic in rural Maryland, they have opened 10 more, including the first pulmonary rehab in Washington, DC.

As Grace Anne explains, “there has been almost no progress in drug development for COPD. We are working to find a cure, but there doesn’t seem to be one.”

As Ted told PEOPLE, Grace Anne “used to call COPD the Rodney Dangerfield of diseases. It doesn’t get respect – for many reasons, smoking among them. And one of the things that people What they don’t understand is that smoking is not the only cause of COPD.”

Eight of their clinics are in West Virginia, where about 12% of the population has been diagnosed with the disease, according to CDC estimates. As Grace Anne says, “the smoking rate has decreased in this country, yet women in rural areas are still being diagnosed with COPD where there are many environmental risks.”

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Ted explains, “pulmonary rehab gives people their independence and dignity.” It might be, I’ll go to the mailbox again and get some mail. I couldn’t do that. Before I can take a deep breath.’ It can be very modest but it is life-changing.”

He continues, “I don’t know what better advertising slogan for pulmonary rehab could be than to point to someone who was given 3 to 5 years to live—and who is still alive 23 years later.” .”

For more information, visit copdsos.org or copdfoundation.org