Addressing Brain Injury in Under-Resourced Settings : A Practical Guide to Community-Centred Approaches

Many of the world’s population have no access to appropriate diagnostic, neurorehabilitative or support services following brain injury. Addressing Brain Injury in Under-Resourced Settings: A Practical Guide to Community-Centred Approaches tackles this unacceptable gap in service provision by empowering the reader to provide basic care, education and support for patients with brain injuries and their families.

Written for an audience which does not necessarily have any prior knowledge of the brain, neurorehabilitation or brain injuries/pathologies, this practical guide first examines the global context of brain injury, considering the cross-cultural realities across communities worldwide. The book goes on to explore the reality of brain injury and how to work with its consequences, offering practical knowledge and advice in a user-friendly, richly illustrated format. It provides easily digestible information about the brain, including its normal functioning and the ways in which it can be damaged through injury and disease. The book also covers the basic skills needed to identify neurological difficulties and provides guidance on basic rehabilitation input and support. The final section of the book covers how to provide services, including working with organisations and communities, volunteering, initiating and developing community-based projects and programmes, and caring for patients and their families from emergency to recovery to rehabilitation.

This book is an invaluable resource for community health workers, voluntary sector workers and all professional healthcare providers who work with brain-injured patients around the world. It will also be important reading for policy developers, fundraising organisations and those who work with global humanitarian initiatives.

Ross Balchin is a clinical neuropsychologist and a Clinical Research Fellow for the University of Cambridge's NIHR Global Health Research Group on Neurotrauma. He is based in the Division of Neurosurgery at the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, and is a member of the UCT Neuroscience Institute. Dr Balchin is also a Program Director for the Neuropsychoanalysis Foundation in New York. He has formerly held both the National Research Foundation (NRF) NPPD and the Claude Leon Foundation postdoctoral fellowships. Dr Balchin is currently the Chairman of the Board of The Brain Injury Trust, a non-profit organization which is involved in the prevention of brain injury and which supports patients and their families from the acute stage of brain injury and on through the recovery process.