Copies of our new leaflet ‘The Facts About COPD & A Better Quality of Life’ are becoming available at GP practices across Cornwall over the next few weeks.
If you are from a GP practice and would like to have a supply of leaflets please let us know by emailing: cornwallbreathers@gmail.com
Printing costs have been sponsored by Ugalde & Son, Liskeard.
Jade Norsworthy, a health professional at Derriford Hospital, ran in the Plymouth Half-Marathon to raise funds on behalf of Cornwall Breathers. She raised £245 of her £250 target!
Thanks Jade! That’s great news! The money will help us expand work as a resource and communications channel for patients, carers and health professionals.
If you would still like to support Jade’s effort, here is the link:
BBC News has reported that Vapes confiscated from school pupils at a college in Kidderminster were found to contain high levels of lead, nickel and chromium.
The amounts of the metals found were:
Also found were carbonyls – which break down, when the e-liquid heats up, into chemicals such as formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, also found in cigarette smoke – at 10 times the level in legal vapes.
Lead is a neurotoxin and impairs brain development, chrome and nickel are allergens and metal particles in general in the bloodstream can trigger blood clotting and can exacerbate cardiovascular disease. Carbonyls are mildly carcinogenic and with sustained use will increase the risk of cancer
The full BBC report is here: BBC News
Jade Norsworthy, a health professional at Derriford Hospital, is running in the Plymouth Half-Marathon, to raise funds on behalf of Cornwall Breathers.
If you would like to support her, here is the link:
You can now help Cornwall Breathers achieve its aims by making a donation to the charity using the ‘Donate’ button on the main menu and the sidebar of this website.
If you want to fundraise for Cornwall Breathers – maybe a sponsored run, tea party, a sky-dive – whatever is your thing – we are registered with GoFundMe.
All you need to do is set up a GoFundMe fundraising page and then start spreading the word. Share your fundraising challenge on social media – don’t forget to tag us so we can share it too! Ask friends, family and colleagues to donate and check if your employer offers match funding.
Any money you raise would go towards funding what we do, providing a resource and communications channel for patients, carers and health professionals.
During a recent stay at Honeyford Ward, Derriford, Cornwall Breathers co-founder Joe Barr took the opportunity for ‘selfies’ with the great nursing team that work there. Joe says that ‘They are a lovely, caring, cheerful people.’
Cornwall Breathers and the Liskeard and Southeast Cornwall Breathers Group have been recognised in an important social policy document on Cornwall social and community well-being*.
In its section on Healthy Living it includes a case study featuring the Liskeard and Southeast Cornwall Breathers Group. It reports that the Group, a not-for-profit set up in 2006 by people who have Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) a No Smoking Schools Project. It says that despite their own multiple health issues, over the last 15 years the Group members ‘made a remarkable impression on schools, medical professionals and the local community.’ Over 30,000 school students were reached, showing them the harms of smoking and how smoking can ruin their health.
In 2019 two grants of £2,500 from the CF Community Fund and The Live Well Fund enabled the Group to create an educational video and lesson package. Any school can download the video resource and use it as part of a PSHE lesson, with support through a Bulletin Board where users can ask questions, share experiences and receive feedback.
CCF Grants Officer, Donna Wheadon went to the premier viewing of the No Smoking School Project video. She said: ‘It was an emotional and touching visit and showed great dedication, selflessness and passion from the members …..who want to show people the long-term harm of smoking, with lived experience.’
The Cornwall Breathers website has now been established to help spread the benefits of this approach more widely, by becoming a resource and communications channel for patients, carers and health professionals.
*’Vital Signs’ is a research document designed to identify social and community priorities in Cornwall written by the Cornwall Community Foundation [CCF].
Asthma+Lung UK is the public facing information hub for the British Lung Foundation (BLF). It has stacks of helpful information for those with breathing difficulties.
You can access it via this link: Asthma+Lung UK
