This Girl Can: Pops' story
For the past three weeks television adverts, social media posts and billboards across the land have advertised Sport England’s latest campaign This Girl Can. It’s a sassy celebration of women everywhere no matter how they exercise, how they look, or how sweaty they get.
The national charity, the English Federation of Disability Sport (EFDS) is supporting This Girl Can to ensure more disabled women can get involved in the campaign.
Last week, Sport England’s latest Active People Survey was published. It showed that 121,700 fewer disabled people and 125,000 fewer women are regularly taking part in sport. EFDS believes that the results reinforce the importance of understanding and responding to disabled people’s needs and preferences much more effectively.
Campaigns like This Girl Can will play an important role in increasing the numbers of all active women, especially those living with impairments and health conditions.
Hannah ‘Pops’ Barham-Brown, 27, is a medical student with aspirations of becoming a surgeon, who became disabled in November of 2014 and has since taken up wheelchair basketball.
“I’m training twice a week,” she says. “I’m taking it quite seriously!”
"Stuff it, I’m going to get hot and sweaty and have an attitude."
Pops – This Girl Can
A very active child, Pops enjoyed ballet, modern, jazz and tap dance, and also enjoyed running. As she tells EFDS, “that’s pretty much all gone now.”
Fighting frequent pain in her knees, the Newcastle-born medical student now living in London committed to raising money for the British Heart Foundation by running both a 10k and a half-marathon in 2014.
“I already had knee problems which I probably compounded by doing those long runs,” she admits. “Now it has left me with some long term, if not lifelong, issues with my right leg.”
A final diagnosis in the autumn of Ehlers Danlos Syndrome helped Pops.
“I am not in a wheelchair all the time, and currently I wear a very attractive knee brace that takes over most of my right leg, plus I am in and out of physiotherapy,” she explains.
“I’m aiming to get out of my brace, but we’ll see. A lot of people with my condition are in and out of wheelchairs.
“To have a formal diagnosis was really nice, because it meant that people knew there was a problem, that I needed to be taken seriously and that I needed support and help. So that’s been refreshing, but it has also been quite difficult. I want to become a surgeon, and I don’t know of that many disabled surgeons. So being classed as a disabled medical student is another barrier, as well as being a mature student and a woman. It just felt like another issue that I’d have to overcome.
“So it’s been a mixture of the really good and really bad, but now I’m getting more support and there’s more that helps me.”
As well as the support from friends, family and St George’s Hospital, part of the University of London, after a period of reflection Pops took it upon herself to find a sport which she could embrace along with her new found impairment.
And then she remembered something she had tried as a teenager.
“Now that I have a lot of chronic knee problems, I wanted a sport to do – I wanted to get out of breath again. And I found wheelchair basketball.
“I played the sport as a teenager because I had friends in wheelchairs and they needed someone to make up the numbers in their team. I played for about a year when I was 15, and then when I realised I couldn’t run any more I started playing basketball again only last month.”
And she has fallen in love with the sport.
“I absolutely love wheelchair basketball, to be honest. I’ve found it far easier to get used to than I thought – I didn’t think I had much upper-body strength but it seems to be growing remarkably quickly.
“A lot of my teammates are in their teens and so are quite a bit younger than me. They’ve taken very well to this grandma turning up and playing, as they seem to think of me. And it’s so much fun and they’re so lovely.”
Not only have her teammates at the Brixton Ballers helped support her, illustrating the power of team spirit and group participation in exercise, but Pops says being embraced by her peers has helped her adapt to her new situation.
“A lot of the players have been playing their whole lives and are in wheelchairs the entire time, so the sport comes more easily to them. And yet, they’re more than happy to pass me the ball and when I score are almost as happy as I am that I’ve managed to get it into the basket.
“It’s nice for me to play, because at university I’m the obviously disabled one with the big leg brace. But when I go to training, if anything I’m one of the less impaired ones. It helps me realise I’m not doing badly at all. It’s a good kick up the backside for me, to remember that I’m not in that bad a situation. And it has really helped me come to terms with my diagnosis and what I can and cannot now do.”
Pops feels increasingly fit and empowered by her sport, and endorses the messages of empowerment communicated by Sport England’s popular This Girl Can campaign.
“I like the fact that This Girl Can is encouraging women to do exercise, and I also like that it’s stepping away from an image of having to look ladylike and glamorous all the time. Frankly, I don’t know anyone who can keep their makeup on when they’re exercising – it just slides off.
“I meet people every day who can’t do exercise or won’t do exercise. It’s all about your health and wellbeing.
“For me, being able to exercise is a really good way of dealing with frustrations and not exactly turning my brain off, but not thinking about medical studies. I just get to throw a ball around and concentrate on that, and I find it quite cathartic.
“So I liked This Girl Can’s sense of ‘stuff it, I’m going to get hot and sweaty and have an attitude’. I love the campaign’s attitude!”
