Community Based Rehabilitation

Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) is a strategy which evolved to address the problems of persons with disabilities in the community considering the limited availability and poor access of rehabilitation services. The Department of PMR along with the Low Cost Effective Care Unit of CMC initiated a CBR program in the poor slum areas of Vellore Town in 2002. This program was initiated with the support of World Health Organization (WHO).

Considering the need for more information on current practice and research in CBR, a PhD research was undertaken to study the effectiveness of an integrated model of CBR on the quality of life of persons with disabilities in the community. The objectives of this study were to generate theory on the value of an ‘integrated model’ that uses an educational strategy and to explore the value of secondary and tertiary care services for persons with disabilities in a community based rehabilitation programme for the improvement of their quality of life.

Qualitative Analysis using a ‘Case Study’ design was undertaken based on the Framework Technique. The quality of life of persons with disabilities and the role of secondary and tertiary care centres in CBR were explored.

This integrated model of CBR that uses an educational strategy, has good links with secondary/tertiary care centres and makes use of social capital, which is available in the community, improved the overall QOL of persons with disabilities. It also showed that overall QOL of PWD will not improve to its full potential if solutions are mooted from polarized viewpoints.

This CBR program has been a foundation for many outreach activities such as safety awareness and injury prevension workshops in schools, outreach clinics and teaching-learning program for rehab professionals. It also helped to expand the partnership with three other departments (Community Health, Ophthalmology, ENT) for serving the economically disadvantaged communities with the support of CBM since 2016.