Gathering Perspective: Reshaping Rehabilitation & Recovery of Stroke, Brain Injury, and Spinal Cord Injury in BC Through Community Engagement
How might we co-create a roadmap for improving the current rehabilitation and recovery services for people with stroke, traumatic brain injury, and spinal cord injury in British Columbia?
The current landscape of rehabilitation and recovery for stroke, brain injury, and spinal cord injury in BC is made up of a variety of systems and services that face challenges in the coordination of care across an individual’s lifespan. Barriers like the imbalance of specialized health centers and providers across BC, acute-focused care, and the limitations of financial support demonstrate a need for a unified strategy to better support people with these injuries, who require highly specialized expertise and equitable support.
Through a collaboration between the Health Design Lab, the Heart + Stroke Foundation, and a project steering committee of 5 community organizations, we aimed to build the case for a client-centred, systematic, integrated, and organized province-wide approach to rehabilitation and recovery services for people living with stroke, traumatic brain injury, and spinal cord injury. Given that a patchwork of services and programs currently exists, this project sought to identify how to build a more integrated system to better support individuals in their rehabilitation and recovery journey.
Engagement Approach
In the initial phase of this project, the HDL team co-facilitated a series of virtual design-led community engagement workshops with people with lived experience, as well as people working professionally and conducting research within the field. The first round of workshops focused on conversations around current needs and services, with the second round engaging participants in conversations about how they would envision a future system that would better meet those needs. Through an in-depth synthesis of the information gathered over 12 workshops, the project team identified 5 areas of focus and 4 areas for future exploration that informed a set of recommendations.
In phase two of the collaboration, insights from the community engagement workshop informed a set of policy recommendations and a policy recommendation survey to gather province-wide feedback.
Knowledge Sharing
Phase 1: Community Engagement Report
Gathering Perspective: Reshaping Rehabilitation & Recovery of Stroke, Brain Injury and Spinal Cord Injury in BC Through Community Engagement.
Phase 2: Policy Recommendations Report
Gathering Perspective: Policy recommendations survey summary.
Additional project information can be found here.
Project Collaborators
Partners:
Heart + Stroke Foundation
Spinal Cord Injury BC
After Stroke BC/March of Dimes Canada
BC Brain Injury Association
BC Brain Wellness Program
GF Strong Rehabilitation Centre
Funder:
Systems Change Grant, Vancouver Foundation
HDL Project Team:
Nadia Beyzaei
Caylee Raber
Blair Muxiang Yu
Yutaan Lin
Timeline:
Feb 2022 – May 2023
