Sara Lundell

I work as an associate professor in physiotherapy at the Department of Community Medicine and Rehabilitation at Umeå University. I am running a project that aims to investigate, using both quantitative and qualitative methods, how stigma-related emotions such as shame and guilt affect self-management in persons with COPD.

My research focuses on support for self-management in different groups, mainly for people with COPD. I work a lot with qualitative methods in the form of individual interviews and workshops to capture experiences of the patients themselves, but also healthcare professionals who work with the patient group. I also use surveys to collect data on this. When developing interventions, it is important to take part of the wishes and opinions of future users, therefore I work with co-creation processes with patients with COPD, relatives and healthcare professionals.

I am a registered physiotherapist since 2006 and received a master's degree in physiotherapy in 2012. In November 2018, I defended my dissertation COPD in primary care. Exploring conditions for implementation of evidence-based interventions and eHealth. During 2019-2020, I was the senior research assistant at the Department of Community Medicine and Rehabilitation at Umeå University, evaluating the use of the COPD web and with the development of the eHealth tool Me & COPD. During 2021-2023 I was a postdoctoral fellow in medical sociology at the Department of Sociology at Umeå University.