About UPTURN

​Why are we doing this study?

Pulmonary Rehabilitation (PR) is a treatment for people with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). It involves supervised exercise and education to help manage symptoms. Before starting PR, patients go through an assessment to see if they are a good fit for the programme and to fine-tune their treatment. Attending this assessment is a strong indicator that they will continue with the PR programme. However, about one-third of patients don’t show up for their assessment, and this issue is more common among those from disadvantaged or ethnic minority backgrounds.

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What is our aim?

We aim to create a service to help more people attend their PR assessment. The service will be designed to support attendance for all eligible patients. To address health inequalities, we are involving people from communities often under-represented in research because of language barriers, economic challenges, or both.

We’re also talking to healthcare professionals to find out what works and what doesn’t when it comes to providing PR, especially for people from minority and disadvantaged backgrounds. This will help us develop better, more personalized support to increase PR attendance. The plan will be tested in a clinical trial, and if it works well, we hope to make it a standard part of the PR process across NHS England.