Grant: Catalyst Grant: Partnering for Impact - General Pool

Neurological conditions are a significant cause for disabilities in Canada, requiring rehabilitation to improve the function and quality of life. Nevertheless, inequities in neurorehabilitation access and unmet needs exist, especially affecting rural areas, leading to diminished functional outcomes, complications and hospital readmissions. No consensus exists on consistent definitions of neurorehabilitation amidst diverse interventions and on how to deliver neurorehabilitation across health systems with rural-urban population spread. Despite recent advances in neurorehabilitation research, access to neurorehabilitation clinical and implementation trials is often limited to metropolitan areas. Our goal is to improve the quality and equitable access of neurorehabilitation care and research across the patient journey by creating the Community of Neurorehabilitation Networks for Engaged Care and Transformation (CONNECT Alberta) to enable provincial neurorehabilitation planning and implementation. This will be achieved by bringing together patients, families, clinicians, healthcare leaders, government and community representatives, and researchers to build consensus on (a) the definition, scope, and monitoring metrics of neurorehabilitation services across the patient journey in Alberta; (b) the recommendations on prioritized gaps including how to and who will address them; (c) the co-design of specific provincial clinical neurorehabilitation research strategy to improve research access and relevance; and, (d) the evaluation of the research co-production approaches used, related to context and quality. CONNECT Alberta will establish an infrastructure to promote relationship building, open dialogue and iterative co-production study activities. We will co-design with diverse partners to refine proposed methodologies, recruitment strategies, data collection and analysis plan, and deliverable preparation. Consensus will be built with scientifically rigorous methods.