It's not 'just a cough'
#CelebratingEngagement
with Let's Talk About Cough
We’re all guilty of it: someone coughs, we flinch, we shuffle away. Yet for countless people, that cough is chronic, not contagious, and our reaction adds to their daily struggle.
Chronic cough is real yet routinely dismissed. Let’s Talk About Cough is a public engagement project that is determined to flip this narrative. Led by the University of Manchester and Imperial College London in collaboration with Vocal, this remarkable project earned the Achievement Award (Team) at the 2025 President’s Awards for Excellence in Societal Engagement.
“Our aim is to create empathy and understanding about chronic cough and its impact on people’s lives by sharing stories in creative ways,” said Ellen Dowell, Creative Producer. Chronic cough is a cough lasting longer than eight weeks, persisting despite treatment. It affects around one in ten people and can profoundly impact someone’s life.
Let’s Talk About Cough was funded by Wellcome in 2018 in parallel with a research project investigating the biology of chronic cough. Twelve researchers, clinicians, nurses, and speech and language therapists participated in the public engagement activities equally alongside twelve people with lived experience of chronic cough.
Start by listening
“Let’s Talk About Cough pioneered our methodology, which has since been developed further in other participatory projects. We structured the public engagement in two phases,” said Ellen. In 2022, the first phase brought all the participants together in a creative exchange process. Facilitators led online workshops using creative writing, poetry, comedy, and storytelling to exchange both the researchers’ and lived-experience perspectives on chronic cough. “Everyone was participating in the exact same way and had the exact same role,” recalled Ellen. The main criteria of this first stage: everyone needed to feel heard.
“By the end of the first stage, everyone’s stories, knowledge and experiences were woven together to create a rich understanding,” said Ellen.
The second stage of the project was to turn that collective understanding into an experience for a wider audience.
One in Ten was the result of the second stage; an immersive audio experience designed for people to listen to in public libraries, now available online.
What is your WHY?
Before producing One in Ten, the participants were challenged to define their ‘why’. This meant they had to answer some hard questions, including, “What is our story? Who do we want to share it with? How do we want to share it?” explained Ellen.
Participants reflected on the huge number of physical impacts that come with a chronic cough, which in extreme circumstances can include broken ribs, insomnia, incontinence, blackouts, vomiting, and panic attacks. Yet, it was the social impacts that participants reported as the most detrimental: “The feeling that people think you are infectious, an irritation, an annoyance, even a threat,” relayed Ellen.
Participants wanted the audio experience to be listened to by the public in everyday settings, so they chose to site the experience in public libraries. The development of One in Ten involved additional online workshops, library visits, and mailing microphones so participants could record their own stories. The work piloted at the Great Exhibition Road Festival 2023 and has since reached audiences in various public libraries, events and festivals, including Sick Festival 2024 and Manchester Festival of Libraries.
Creativity to invite participation
Creativity lies at the heart of this project and is the foundation of all of Ellen’s work. When asked about the importance of using creativity in public engagement, Ellen responded, “When someone asks you a question about something so fundamental to the way you work, it is hard to answer because you just can’t image doing it any differently.”
When we talk about public engagement, we are talking about shaping experiences for people. Developing these experiences is a creative endeavour.
“It’s about bringing together researchers with creative practitioners and people with lived experiences and using creativity to level the playing field,” said Ellen. “It enables us to work together to find better and more impactful ways to communicate stories and create the best possible engagement experience.”
Ellen explained that creativity was essential to One in Ten’s success. “We all cough. Coughing is dismissed as a trivial, boring, irritating thing. So, the idea of dedicating half an hour to experience something about coughing is not something most people would be interested in.” Capturing attention was especially challenging and required strategic creative choices, including their decision not to use the word ‘cough’ when describing the engagement experience to the public. “We knew we needed to focus on sharing personal stories with emotional impact to spark people’s interest,” said Ellen.
“Winning the award felt like we had overcome this challenge. For a topic that most people may have said, ‘Oh, I’m not interested in that’, this is proof that it can be engaging and compelling,” said Ellen. “Ultimately, it’s about the stories of our participants being recognised.”
Let’s Talk About Cough is collaboration at its best. As Ellen says, “No one person has the skills needed for an entire project.” By bringing together diverse skills and perspectives, this team is proof that collaboration multiplies impact.
Members of the Let's Talk About Cough team: Linda, Ellen, Joan, Rachel, Dara, Theo, Jacky, Mark, Eric
Members of the Let's Talk About Cough team: Linda, Ellen, Joan, Rachel, Dara, Theo, Jacky, Mark, Eric
Pictured, from left to right: Let's Talk About Cough team members Eric Dubuis, Ellen Dowell and Susan Sawyer.
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