Rauch et al
1
recently published a Special Communication regarding the World Health Organization’s
(WHO’s) planned methodology to develop a Package of Rehabilitation Interventions (PRI).
Given the early stage of this project and in the hope that the process will be an
ongoing one, I would like to express 4 concerns about the proposed methodology. First,
the initial step in the planned process is to select health conditions that are prevalent and that cause disability. The authors acknowledge that “(defining)
a package of rehabilitation interventions based on health conditions and not on functioning
domains…may be controversial”
1
(p2209) but suggest that being able to later search the PRI for interventions by functioning
domains adequately addresses this limitation. However, if rehabilitation is a process
that primarily deals with function,
2
function should be the starting point, not an afterthought. (Another problem with using health
conditions as the starting point is that such an approach reinforces the medical rather
than the social model of disability.) At least adding functional domains to the search
strategy for rehabilitation interventions would ensure, through a process of triangulation, that important interventions are not missed.To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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References
- Toward strengthening rehabilitation in health systems: methods used to develop a WHO Package of Rehabilitation Interventions.Arch Phys Med Rehabil. 2019; 100: 2205-2211
- The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF).World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland2001
- Guidelines on the provision of manual wheelchairs in less-resourced settings.World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland2008
- Effectiveness of the Wheelchair Skills Training Program: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Disabil Rehabil Assist Technol. 2019; 14: 391-409
- Evidence in rehabilitation medicine: between facts and prejudices.Am J Phys Med Rehabil. 2019; 98: 88-96
Article info
Publication history
Published online: February 27, 2020
Footnotes
Disclosures: none.
Identification
Copyright
© 2020 by the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine
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Access this article on ScienceDirectLinked Article
- Author Response to “WHO Package of Rehabilitation Interventions: Some Concerns About Methodology”Archives of Physical Medicine and RehabilitationVol. 101Issue 6
