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More than 1.2 million people in the UK live with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), which causes breathlessness, coughing and frequent chest infections.

We also know that those with COPD are four times more likely to fall than healthy adults of the same age due to poor balance.

A project led by Professor Samantha Harrison from Teesside University’s School of Health and Life Sciences aims to investigate the factors that contribute to the increased risk of falls and look at whether balance training could help to reduce that risk.

The project involves working closely with people who live with COPD, including members of the Breathe Easy group in Darlington, and the research team have been exploring creative ways of working with the group to capture their experiences.

This included using comic-based illustration to support the group to describe the challenges that COPD can bring.

The team delivered six online comic-based illustration workshops to members of the Breathe Easy group, facilitated by a professional cartoonist.

The illustrations they produced highlighted how breathlessness leads to an overwhelming sense of disorientation and loss of control that can often leave them feeling unsteady.

The group added descriptive words to their drawings, which included ‘panic’, ‘try to focus’, ‘self-conscious’, ‘hot and sweaty’ and ‘sadness’.

Professor Harrison said: “Drawing comics is a fun and nostalgic activity that helped to foster trusting relationships and everyone really engaged with the sessions. The cartoons that were produced were brilliant as well as thought-provoking.

“Importantly, the drawings and the insights we gained from them led the research team to reassess our assumptions about ‘balance’ and what it means to people with breathlessness, and that has informed the next stage of our work.

“This research has the potential to have a considerable impact on the long-term health of people with COPD in our region and beyond. It is of particular importance in an area like Middlesbrough which has high levels of deprivation, as greater deprivation has been linked with a greater risk of falling with COPD.

“By the end of the project we hope to have a much better understanding of what exactly increases falls risk in people with COPD and to have developed a balance training programme to help reduce this risk.”

Professor Harrison secured an NIHR Advanced Fellowship and funding of £1.1 million to undertake the project, working with NHS trusts across the Durham and Tees Valley Alliance, as well as with academics from Newcastle, Northumbria and Manchester Metropolitan Universities.

You can read more about the project here

Find out more about Breathe Easy Darlington.

You can view and download some of the cartoon drawings, below.