Living with Long COVID-19: A Virtual Body Mapping Study

<i>Long COVID-19 has emerged as a significant public health problem, and understanding the long COVID-19 journey is paramount to patient-centered care. Virtual body mapping (VBM) was used to gain a deeper understanding of both shared and differing experiences of patients with long COVID-19. There were 3 VBM sessions (each 2 hours). Session topics included (1) The Long COVID-19 Experience, (2) The Life of a COVID-19 Long Hauler, and (3) Resilience and Coping. Guided and structured by VBM sessions and corresponding exercises, an adapted method for visual analysis influenced by constructivist grounded theory focused on the following data outputs: body maps, testimonios, and keys. Robust data outputs included 19 COVID-19 long haulers who primarily identified as women (N = 15) and of White race (N = 11). Visual data included powerful colors, images, and words to describe the embodied experience of people living with long COVID-19. Textual data narrated journeys of COVID-19 long haulers, providing heartfelt and honest depictions of ‘Life before, during, and after COVID-19’. This study adds to the limited literature around in-depth qualitative interpretation of body maps and introduces VBM as a relevant person-centered qualitative method for exploring chronic disease.</i>