Overview
Taking place on 26 May, 2025 (18:00-19:00 CEST), this instalment of ERS Vision Live will feature an expert panel, co-chaired by Prof. Hilary Pinnock and Prof. Dr Michael Kreuter, discussing the common problems and shared solutions to respiratory health around the globe.
The expert panellists will discuss key topics, including:
• Management of long COVID;
• Public health implications of smoking and vaping;
• TB management and treatment.
Though this event stands alone as a panel discussion, it will also form part of the planned activities and events which link to the ERS Congress 2025 theme: 'Respiratory health around the globe'. Learn more about the Congress 2025 theme.
Co-Chairs
Prof. Hilary Pinnock
• Hilary is Professor of Primary Care Respiratory Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
• She leads programmes of work in the Centre for Applied Respiratory Research, Innovation and Impact (CARRii) and the RESPIRE Global Health Research Unit, and co-chairs the European Respiratory Society Clinical Research Collaboration 'CONNECT', which focuses on implementation of digital respiratory care.
• Building on a career as a family physician, her research focusses on delivery of care, specifically the IMP2ART (Implementing improved asthma self-management as routine) programme developing and evaluating implementation strategies that facilitate supported asthma self-management in routine primary care, and the Telescot programme that evaluated and implemented digital health for respiratory and other non-communicable diseases.
• With the RESPIRE (Global Health Research Unit on Respiratory Health) team in Bangladesh, India and Malaysia, she is leading work developing pulmonary rehabilitation (both home/centre-based) in low-resource settings, which will be evaluated in the MRC-funded PuRe trial.
• Hilary chairs the Education Council of the European Respiratory Society and is involved with the International Primary Care Respiratory Group.
Prof. Dr Michael Kreuter
• Michael is Professor of Pulmonology at the University of Mainz, and Director of the Mainz Center for Pulmonary Medicine, which is an expert lung centre consisting of the Departments of Pneumology, Mainz University Medical Center and of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, Marienhaus Clinic Mainz, Mainz, Germany.
• Formerly, he worked at the University of Heidelberg as Director of the Center for Interstitial and Rare Lung Diseases and was Director of the Clinic for Pneumology at the Rhön-Klinikum Clinic, Germany.
• He currently serves the European Respiratory Society as Head of the Interstitial Lung Disease (ILD) Assembly and is engaged in several patient support groups.
• Michael is board certified in internal medicine, pulmonology and haematology-oncology.
• His clinical and scientific interests focus on interstitial and rare lung diseases.
• He is conducting various research projects on comorbidities, epidemiology, biomarkers and diagnosis and therapy of interstitial lung diseases, and is engaged in educative events, such as organising again the next ERS school on ILDs in Mainz, Germany.
Speakers
Dr Sarah Rhodes
• Sarah is a cardio-respiratory physiotherapist, with over 20 years' experience, who has worked clinically in both acute and community settings, and in both the public and private sector.
• She currently works as a lecturer at the School of Physiotherapy, University of Otago in New Zealand.
• Her research interests include long COVID, COPD, sleep health, physical activity for long term conditions and behaviour change.
• As part of the Physiotherapy New Zealand cardio-respiratory special interest group, Sarah has worked to raise awareness of long COVID, develop long COVID resources and advocate for those living with the condition.
• In 2022, she was awarded life membership of Physiotherapy New Zealand for her notable contribution to cardio-respiratory physiotherapy in New Zealand.
• Sarah is the President Elect of the New Zealand branch of the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand; having previously held roles as both Treasurer and Allied Health representative.
Prof. Richard van Zyl-Smit
• Richard is a Professor of Pulmonology and Consultant Pulmonologist, and Deputy Head of the Division of Pulmonology, Department of Medicine at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, South Africa.
• He is a principal researcher at the UCT Lung Institute.
• Currently he serves as the immediate Past-President of the South African Thoracic Society, and incoming Chair of the American Thoracic Society International Health Committee.
• His major research interests are airways diseases specifically; asthma and COPD with a focus on tobacco, household air pollution, electronic cigarettes and their impact on pulmonary immune responses (to pneumococcal and mycobacterial infection) and the development of COPD, particularly in low-income settings.
• Currently he serves as the immediate Past-President of the South African Thoracic Society, and incoming Chair of the American Thoracic Society International Health Committee.
• Richard is a Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) ambassador and serves as the South African representative on the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) committee.
Dr Cristina Vilaplana
• Cristina is an MD, PhD, expert on tuberculosis, and currently working as the Head of the Experimental TB Unit at the Hospital and Research Institute Germans Trias i Pujol, in Northern Barcelona metropolitan area, Spain.
• She is Coordinator of the TB Management Plan of the same hospital and referral area.
• Her main lines of research are focused on the evaluation of therapeutic strategies to modulate the inflammation in TB, and in the search of biomarkers and other tools to improve TB patients' disease course and management.
• Cristina is member of the collaborative networks CIBER Enfermedades Respiratorias, the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action ADVANCE-TB and the TBnet.