Communication Activities

Chair: Francesca Gimigliano

Co-Chair: Mauro Zampolini

HQ Assistant: Sara Liguori

Advisors: Chiara Arienti, Carlotte Kiekens, Stefano Negrini

Language reviewers: Betty Bellard O’Keefe

The Communication working area aims to ensure all the relevant evidence for rehabilitation to be available for all rehabilitation stakeholders. The relevant goals of the Cochrane Rehabilitation Field that are related to the Communication Working area are: Goal 1 - to connect rehabilitation stakeholders globally; Goal 2 - to translate rehabilitation knowledge; and Goal 6 - to promote Cochrane to rehabilitation stakeholders and vice versa. The rehabilitation stakeholders include clinicians and allied health professionals working in rehabilitation, medical or allied rehabilitation health professionals’ students, policy decision-makers, rehabilitation administrators, patients, and caregivers. To reach all of these stakeholders, the working area acts across four main domains: website, social media, blogs, and newsletters. 

Education Activities

Chair: Julia Patrick Engkasan

Co-Chair: Geert Verheyden

HQ Assistant: Vanessa Young

Advisors: Elena Ilieva, Frane Grubišić

The functions of the Education working group are related to the fourth goal of Cochrane Rehabilitation, which is to promote Evidence-Based Clinical Practices, by providing education and training to rehabilitation stakeholders. Our activities are related to the 5th key theme of the Cochrane KT Strategy Framework: ‘Improving Climate: Advocating for evidence-informed decision-making in healthcare’. To achieve this objective, the Education working group uses these four means: workshops and courses, online resources, e-learning modules, and collaboration with the Association of Academic Physiatrists (AAP).

One of the Education committee’s main activities is to conduct evidence-based workshops or sessions at conferences or congresses. With a strong belief that EBM education is essential to today’s healthcare professionals, the Education working area will continue to champion evidence-based medicine for the rehabilitation community. We hope our efforts will bring about changes in the skills, attitudes, and behaviors of EBCP of rehabilitation stakeholders.

Methodology Activities

Chair: Pierre Côté

Co-Chair: Chiara Arienti

HQ Assistant: Stefano Giuseppe Lazzarini

Advisors: Susan Armijo-Olivo, Alex Todhunter-Brown, Thorsten Meyer, Dinesh Kumbhare, William Levack, Livia Puljak, Stefano Negrini

The aim of the methodology working area is to improve the quality of the methods used and the certainty of evidence produced in rehabilitation research as well as making them available for rehabilitation stakeholders. The relevant goals of the Cochrane Rehabilitation that are related to the Methodology Working area are: Goal 4 - To promote Evidence-Based Clinical Practice and Goal 5 - To review and strengthen methodology relevant to Evidence-Based Clinical Practice to inform both rehabilitation and other Cochrane work related to rehabilitation and stimulating methodological developments in other Cochrane groups. The Working Area (WA) is planning to divide its work into two main topics: methodology quality which includes meta-epidemiological and outcome projects, and evidence certainty which includes GRADE and MECIR projects. The WA is also leading three important projects: the RCTRACK project, REHCOVER project, and Rehabilitation Definition for research purpose project.

Publication Activities

Chair: Aydan Oral

HQ Assistant: Stefano Giuseppe Lazzarini

Advisors: Sina Arman, Frane Grubišić, Francesco Negrini, Augusto Fusco

The aim of the Publication Working Area is to diffuse the contents of the Cochrane Systematic Reviews that are of rehabilitation interest to the scientific community. To accomplish this aim, we have been developing and reinforcing collaborations with scientific journals to publish Cochrane Corners which are summary reports of published Cochrane reviews relevant to rehabilitation, and they also include comments from a rehabilitation perspective following a structured and agreed template. Our vision is to have Cochrane Corners on different topics in rehabilitation according to the main interest of each journal. We already have agreements with a number of journals (/about-and-contacts/partners/journals) that are publishing Cochrane Corners (/resources/publications/cochrane-corners) produced by Cochrane Rehabilitation.

Another important initiative to reach our aim is the creation of an eBook (electronic book) to report Cochrane evidence on rehabilitation. The systematic approach used for its creation will facilitate on one side the diffusion of knowledge among rehabilitation stakeholders and on the other side will facilitate the identification of topics not covered by Cochrane Reviews. This will allow us to define new priorities for reviews, as well as discover neglected area(s) which may present major methodological problems in the production of high-quality RCTs. These initiatives are carried out together with the other Working Areas. 

Reviews Activities

Chair: William Levack

HQ Assistant: Michele Patrini

Advisors: Farooq Azam Rathore

The primary aim of the Reviews Working Area is to identify and “tag” reviews on rehabilitation interventions in the Cochrane library and to produce lists of these reviews for interested funders, policy makers, researchers, clinicians, and users of rehabilitation services worldwide.  Secondary aims of this Working Area include: developing better methods for finding rehabilitation-relevant reviews; developing and applying methods for categorisation of rehabilitation-relevant reviews to make them more accessible to specialist areas of practice; using this “tagging” work to influence the Cochrane library’s search engine; increasing the number of professional disciplines and specialists areas involved in this “tagging” work.  This work is of primary importance as the Review Working Area’s findings feed into Cochrane Rehabilitation’s other workstreams and specialist projects.