What is the BLF COPD Project?
What is COPD?
What is the National Service Framework for COPD?
What is the project doing?
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The British Lung Foundation’s COPD Project is a three-year project which was set up in January 2007. The COPD Project aims to:
- Raise awareness of COPD among the general public and health professionals
- Share information and expertise among patients, carers, health and social care practitioners, managers, commissioners and others in light of the forthcoming National Service Framework for COPD in England
- Support the delivery of COPD campaigns and publications, developed and produced by the British Lung Foundation.
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is an umbrella term for a number of conditions including chronic bronchitis and emphysema. COPD is a long-term lung condition which progressively gets worse. There is no cure for it, but a lot can be done to relieve its symptoms.COPD is the UK’s fifth biggest killer, claiming around 30,000 lives a year, yet nine out of ten people in the UK have never heard of it. Click here for more information on COPD.
The Department of Health will be launching a new National Service Framework (NSF) for COPD in early 2009. NSFs are ten-year strategies for the NHS which aim to raise the quality of care across England for all people living with specified conditions; this will be the first ever national strategy for a respiratory disease in England.
As Patient Advocate, the BLF’s Chief Executive, Dame Helena Shovelton has been working closely with the Department of Health to support the development of the NSF for COPD. For more information about the NSF, click here.
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COPD Awareness Raising Events
The COPD Project delivered 30 awareness days in England in 2007, funded by a Section 64 grant from the Department of Health.
The events mainly consisted of awareness stands in local shopping centres or supermarkets, and in the majority of cases some form of lung testing was carried out on the general public.
Nearly 1000 people were tested for COPD at these events and over 18 per cent were referred to their GP for a follow up test.
We have now received funding from the Department of Health through Section 64 to carry out a further 17 awareness days between April 2008 and March 2009. Further details about these events will be posted here soon.
COPD among Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Communities
The COPD Project has funded translation of the COPD Facts leaflet into 6 languages: Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, Turkish and Urdu.
To order copies of these leaflets, click here. To download them from the website, click here.
Campaigning
The project contributed to the planning and development of the Invisible Lives – Find the Missing Millions Campaign delivered for World COPD Day 2007. This included funding a GP mailing to 11,000 GP practices in England informing them of the campaign and including BLF publications for distribution within their practices.
The project also funded the Invisible Lives Report launched in November 2007. The report identifies the UK’s top ‘hot spots’ for COPD which pinpoints specific areas in the country where people are most at risk of being hospitalised with COPD .The BLF is now in negotiations with PCTs in the hotspot areas to develop ways of working with them to raise awareness of COPD and reduce hospital admissions through public health campaigns in their areas.
You can read more about World COPD Day by clicking here, and download a copy of the Invisible Lives report below. To read a summary of the report's key findings click here.
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For more information about the BLF’s COPD Project or to get involved in our activities as they are developed, here are some ways of how you can contact us:
Call us on: 020 7688 5589
Email us at:
Write to us at: COPD Project, British Lung Foundation, 73-75 Goswell Road, London EC1V 7ER.
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