Health coaching may provide a scalable model that can improve care for people living with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Baseline adherence and inhaler technique were uniformly poor and did not differ by study arm.

At 9 months, health-coached patients reported a greater number of days of adherence compared with usual care patients and were more likely to have used their controller inhalers as prescribed for 5 of the last 7 days.

Of 282 patients identified as eligible for the study, 192 were enrolled and randomized to receive health coaching or usual care.

Within a randomized controlled trial, we recruited English- and Spanish-speaking patients with moderate to severe COPD from urban, public primary care clinics serving a low-income, predominantly African American population.

The AIR health-coaching study was a multisite, single-blinded randomized controlled trial. The study protocol was approved by the UCSF Human Research Protection Program.

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