Dr. Sara Lundell

Biography

Sara Lundell is an Associate Professor in Physiotherapy at Umeå University. Her research focuses on the impact of stigma-related emotions such as shame and guilt on self-management among individuals with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). She is conducting a project that aims to investigate these emotions using both quantitative and qualitative methods, emphasizing the support of self-management groups primarily for COPD patients. Lundell uses qualitative methods, including individual interviews and workshops, to capture the experiences of patients and healthcare professionals involved in care for this patient group. Her work incorporates surveys to collect data that inform the development of interventions, ensuring they align with the wishes and opinions of future users through co-creation processes with patients and their relatives. She has been a registered physiotherapist since 2006 and earned her master's degree in physiotherapy in 2012. In November 2018, she defended her dissertation on the implementation of evidence-based interventions in primary care for COPD. From 2019 to 2020, she served as a senior research assistant at the Department of Community Medicine and Rehabilitation, evaluating a web-based eHealth tool for COPD management. Lundell has also been a postdoctoral fellow in medical sociology at the Department of Sociology at Umeå University from 2021 to 2023, where she continued her research on stigma-related emotions and their impact on COPD self-management.

Research Interests

Experience