Cochrane is a global independent network of researchers, professionals, patients, carers, and people interested in health with a mission to promote evidence based decision-making in healthcare. Within that collaborative network, the Cochrane Fields focus on dimensions of health care other than specific health problems - such as setting of care, type of consumers, types of providers, types of interventions, and/or major divisions of healthcare. In particular, the role of Cochrane Fields is to develop and promote Knowledge Translation by acting a as bridge between the evidence produced by Cochrane and the external stakeholders who need that evidence, as specified in Cochrane's Strategy to 2020.

Cochrane Rehabilitation

Rehabilitation represents a major area of healthcare besides prevention, cure and support. It can be understood as a process aimed at enabling people with disabilities to reach and maintain their optimal physical, sensory, intellectual, psychological and social functional levels. This definition is applicable in all health conditions and decision makers have to be able to decide according to the best and most appropriate evidence in this specific field, in which specific methodological challenges exist. To address this need, a Rehabilitation Field was established within Cochrane.

The mission of Cochrane Rehabilitation is to ensure that all rehabilitation professionals can practice an evidence-based approach, combining the best available evidence as gathered by high quality Cochrane systematic reviews, with their own clinical expertise and patients’ values. This includes advocacy for decision‐making based on finding, understanding and using the best available evidence. This will be achieved by different strategies such as educational activities (courses, workshops,…), publications (Cochrane corners in journals, an e-Book,…) and communication strategies (translation of material, dissemination of evidence relevant for rehabilitation professionals for example through social media,…).  Cochrane Rehabilitation aims to improve the methods for evidence synthesis and to make them coherent with the needs of disabled people and daily clinical practice in rehabilitation. Cochrane Rehabilitation will select, tag and list and disseminate reviews of interest to the field of Rehabilitation.