On World Asthma Day 2011 (3 May), people with asthma and severe asthma are being encouraged to get creative for a unique art contest which will explore what it is like to live with the condition.
The contest is open to people of all ages and will help bridge the gap between doctors’ understanding of the condition and a person’s experience of it.
Asthma is a major health problem around the world and is a one of the world’s major non-communicable diseases. Not all types of asthma are the same and current treatments adopt a uniform approach, meaning they don’t work well for everybody. The art contest is part of a European-wide project called U-BIOPRED - Unbiased BIOmarkers in PREDiction of respiratory disease outcomes. U-BIOPRED is a research project funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), to understand more about severe asthma that involves scientists from universities, research institutes, the pharmaceutical industry and small companies.
U-BIOPRED will help scientists understand more about severe asthma. The researchers will look at how severe asthma differs from one person to another in the hope of uncovering more effective treatments in the future.
U-BIOPRED video
The competition is open to any person with asthma and all types of art work from dance, music and poetry, to paintings and photography are encouraged. The top three winning entries will be displayed on the U-BIOPRED website.
The winner will be invited to the European Respiratory Society Congress in Amsterdam (24-25 September) to receive their award and see their winning entry presented at the opening ceremony. Professor Peter Sterk, project lead, said: “The U-BIOPRED project aims to understand more about asthma and severe asthma. One important way we can do this is to hear from patients directly. This contest enables patients to express, through art, what the condition is like and how it impacts upon their life.”
Professor Peter STERK
University of Amsterdam
“The winning entry will be the piece which best conveys what it is like to have asthma and we want to hear from anyone with the condition, whether you are a budding or artist, or a complete beginner.”
The closing date for all entries is 1 June 2011. You can enter the art contest by uploading a digital copy of your artwork to the website. For full terms and conditions, visit: www.ubiopred.european-lung-foundation.org/artcontest.
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