Improving Access to Traumatic Brain Injury Care Through Learning Health Systems Change: Community-Based Participatory Research Through Human-Centered Design

This special communications piece responds to previous calls from the field of physical medicine and rehabilitation to incorporate methodological diversity in our work, specifically community-based participatory research (CBPR). Our team reports on our CBPR efforts and use of Human-Centered Design (HCD) within the context of executing a multidisciplinary Department of Defense-funded award on improving access to care for those with traumatic brain injury (TBI). First, we situate the context for our program, “Improving Health Care Access and Engagement for Veterans and Service Members with TBI Morbidity”. Second, we review the use of CBPR and HCD methods to interact with project partners, including persons with lived-experience, professional society representatives, clinicians, and policymakers. Third, we conclude with practical recommendations to support CBPR and HCD efforts in this context. Given the complexity of eliciting and understanding community perspectives across lived experiences (eg, patients, clinicians, care partners), the primary contributions of this piece are: (1) the provision of exemplar adaptive HCD activities; and (2) the identification of practices that foster both HCD and CBPR, and (3) strengthen community partnerships and authentic engagement through a tailored approach, specifically with persons with TBI lived experience.