Activity Ideas

This year’s World COPD Day theme is “It’s Not Too Late.” This positive message was chosen to emphasize the meaningful actions people can take to improve their respiratory health, at any stage before or after a COPD diagnosis. Activity ideas for promoting World COPD Day 2012 and its theme include:

If you are a patient support group worker...

  • Produce a radio advertisement highlighting World COPD Day and the goal of raising awareness of COPD.
  • Hold a World COPD Day musical concert with performances from local COPD patients, using woodwind and brass instruments.* To encourage news stories, select a concert title linked to COPD (such as “Airs for All,” for example).
  • Stage a World COPD Day sponsored walk, run, or swim.* Hold an “intergenerational” event in which COPD patients participate with their children or grandchildren to raise awareness of COPD across all generations.
  • Hold a World COPD dance or stage a folk-dancing performance with COPD patients.*
  • Encourage patients, particularly those with limited access to diagnosis, education, or treatment, or health professionals to write to their health ministers, stressing the importance of World COPD Day, lobbying for COPD to be made a national priority disease, and suggesting steps the government could take towards this aim.
  • Hold a lunch or workshop in which diverse groups—patients with COPD, caregivers, doctors, and political leaders—develop strategies for combating COPD and helping those who have it.
  • Hang banners and signs about COPD on the front of an important public building, possibly a government building or a medical center. Inside, distribute educational materials about COPD.
  • Make gold-colored ribbons, which are symbols of COPD awareness, and distribute them widely with the request that people wear them on World COPD Day. Make a small number of “special” gold-colored ribbons to publicly award to people who have helped fight COPD.
  • Hold a competition for journalists in which a prize will be given to the best article published about COPD in the present calendar year.
  • Have a sports competition in which athletes can breathe only through a straw; hand out educational materials about COPD that explain how this describes the situation of people with COPD.
  • Host a workshop or support group session for caregivers of COPD patients.
  • Organize a quilting circle to produce a quilt or wall hanging on the theme of COPD.
  • Hold a “coping workshop” to teach COPD patients skills for accomplishing everyday tasks with less energy.
  • Present an award to smoke-free establishments.
  • Launch a Website offering educational information and advice—include details of regular COPD clinics.
  • Set up a telephone helpline for patients and the public, with free calls if possible to maximize access for all.
  • Publicize World COPD Day with posters, billboards, stickers, or ribbons.
  • Arrange a photocall for journalists around those activities with a strong visual element. Encourage participants from all walks of life to highlight the wide variety of people affected by COPD.
  • If you produce a newsletter, write an article on the activities you are staging for World COPD Day.
  • Develop partnerships to promote increased awareness of COPD as a major public health problem.

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If you are a health-care practitioner...

  • On World COPD Day, hold a public open day to raise awareness about COPD or a free-of-charge COPD screening clinic.
  • Hold a flu vaccination clinic and distribute educational information about how to prevent and respond to COPD exacerbations.
  • Offer a Continuing Medical Education Program that will enable various types of health-care professionals to receive credit for improving their understanding of COPD and its diagnosis, prevention, and treatment.
  • Work with your medical association to arrange for spirometry testing of high-level government officials on World COPD Day. Provide each official with information about COPD in general and about its impact on your country.
  • Arrange for a prominent figure in the field of health care in your country to be interviewed on radio or television as part of media coverage for World COPD Day. As part of this arrangement, send the radio or television station the GOLD press release for World COPD Day.
  • Involve medical students in World COPD Day; for example, have them participate in COPD screening at a public square or market.
  • Organize a diagnosis, education, and treatment bus tour to reach remote areas—or arrange a special bus service bringing patients to the clinics.
  • Arrange a program in which health-care professionals provide education and services to populations at particular risk for COPD (e.g., rural women who live in smoke-filled homes due to unventilated cookstoves).
  • Arrange visits to senior centers prior to World COPD Day to educate seniors about COPD and offer on-the-spot screening.
  • Set up a display of COPD information and treatments in your surgery or hospital.
  • Host a workshop on exercises appropriate for COPD patients. Stage an exercise “performance” with exercises set to music.*
  • Suggest a COPD Question & Answer page or session to your national newspaper or radio station.
  • Stage a meeting of general practitioners and other health professionals to update on latest knowledge in prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Discuss implementation of GOLD documents.
  • Distribute posters with COPD screening questionnaire to local health professionals and clinics.
  • Conduct research on COPD epidemiology in your region or country—emphasizing estimates of diagnosed vs. undiagnosed COPD patients—and publish the findings.
  • If you produce a newsletter, write an article on the activities you are staging for World COPD Day.
  • Develop partnerships to promote increased awareness of COPD as a major public health problem.

 

* Denotes activities that involve an opportunity to raise funds.

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