Monthly COPD Support Group Meetings
Overview
Organization: Hawaii COPD Coalition
Start Date: 10/2007
End Date: Ongoing
Primary Goal: Goal 2: Improve the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and management of COPD by improving the quality of care delivered across the health care continuum.
Secondary Goal(s):
- Goal 1: Empower people with COPD, their families, and caregivers to recognize and reduce the burden of COPD.
Objective(s):
- Increase public awareness of the risk factors and symptoms of COPD so that earlier diagnosis of symptomatic individuals becomes the norm
- Increase the effectiveness and variety of outreach communication campaigns and activities that utilize evidence-based approaches to raise awareness of COPD, particularly among those at high risk, and help people diagnosed with COPD manage the disease
- Expand opportunities to increase COPD awareness across the public-private spectrum
- Develop, disseminate, and maintain unified, multidisciplinary, and patient-centric national guidelines for COPD that are accessible and easy to follow
- Improve access to care for people with COPD, particularly for those in hard-to reach areas
Collaboration: We worked alone
Activity Type: Support group
Activity Description
Educates public, patients, caregivers, healthcare providers about COPD and how to optimize care while thriving with COPD.Audience
General Audience: Patients, Caregivers or family members, At-risk populations, General public, Health professionals
Focused Audience: Hispanic/Latino, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian or Pacific Islander, African American/Black, Caucasian/White, Men, Women
Program Reach: National
Type of Area: Urban, Suburban, Rural
Setting: Online
Cost and Funding Sources
Facilitator(s) donate time; paid for a zoom membership so meetings can last up to 2 hours. Zoom membership was under $200/year. Funding was via contributions -- unrestricted donations made to the Hawaii COPD Coalition.Impact Analysis
Number of patients attending varies greatly, up to 20+ people have attended when the meetings were live (pre-covid before 3/2019). Since they have been via zoom, meetings have tended to be smaller, with up to 7 or fewer per meeting. There are meetings twice a week, 2nd Tuesdays and 2nd Fridays.Advice or Lessons Learned
Work with providers to provide information about your support group, so they can share the information with their patients. One has to continuously recruit patients, since some move, lose interest, get the information they need, get busy with other activities.Related Links
Contact Information
Hawaii COPD Coalition
Executive Director
Honolulu
Hawaii