North American Pilot of TBIconneCT: A Social Communication Intervention via Telehealth for Individuals With Traumatic Brain Injury and Their Conversation Partners.

Purpose: The purpose of this pilot investigation was to identify formative feedback to guide the development of a North American version of the TBIconneCT program. A secondary purpose was to examine the feasibility of delivering the intervention by graduate students.

Method: Two cohorts of individuals with chronic brain injuries and their communication partners were recruited for a 10-week, modified TBIconneCT program delivered by graduate student clinicians via telehealth.

Digital Health Implementation Strategies Coproduced With Adults With Acquired Brain Injury, Their Close Others, and Clinicians: Mixed Methods Study With Collaborative Autoethnography and Network Analysis.

Background: Acquired brain injuries (ABIs), such as stroke and traumatic brain injury, commonly cause cognitive-communication disorders, in which underlying cognitive difficulties also impair communication. As communication is an exchange with others, close others such as family and friends also experience the impact of cognitive-communication impairment. It is therefore an internationally recommended best practice for speech-language pathologists to provide communication support to both people with ABI and the people who communicate with them.

Developing a Digital Health Intervention for Conversation Skills After Brain Injury (convers-ABI-lity) Using a Collaborative Approach: Mixed Methods Study.

Background: People with acquired brain injury (ABI) experience communication breakdown in everyday interactions many years after injury, negatively impacting social and vocational relationships. Communication partner training (CPT) is a recommended intervention approach in communication rehabilitation after ABI. Access to long-term services is essential, both in rural and remote locations.

The Effectiveness and Characteristics of Communication Partner Training Programs for Families of People With Dementia: A Systematic Review.

Background And Objectives: Communication partner training (CPT) is essential in dementia care. Despite families being the largest group of community carers, previous reviews primarily focused on formal carers. This study aimed to understand the characteristics and effectiveness of CPT for families of people with dementia.

Digital Health Interventions for Adults with Acquired Brain Injury and Their Close Others: Implementation, Scalability, and Sustainability in the COVID-19 Context.

The Social Brain Toolkit is a novel suite of web-based interventions to support people with acquired brain injury and their close others with communication difficulties post-injury. The aim of this study was to investigate potential impacts of the Toolkit's wider political, economic, regulatory, professional, and sociocultural context on its implementation, scalability, and sustainability. Nine people with academic, healthcare or industry experience implementing digital health interventions prior to and during COVID-19 were individually interviewed.

Differentiating Use of Facial Expression between Individuals with and without Traumatic Brain Injury Using Affectiva Software: A Pilot Study.

This study investigated the feasibility of using an automated facial coding engine, Affectiva (integrated in iMotions, version 8.2), for evaluating facial expression after traumatic brain injury (TBI). An observational cross-sectional study was conducted based on facial expression data from videos of participants with TBI and control participants.

Developing Social-ABI-lity: An Online Course to Support Safe Use of Social Media for Connection After Acquired Brain Injury.

Purpose: People who have an acquired brain injury (ABI) experience challenges using social media. Inversely, rehabilitation clinicians report feeling inadequately prepared to support them in its use. We aimed to develop a collaboratively designed, evidence-based online training resource to support people with an ABI to learn about using social media.

'It gives you encouragement because you're not alone': A pilot study of a multi-component social media skills intervention for people with acquired brain injury.

Background: People with an acquired brain injury (ABI) find it challenging to use social media due to changes in their cognition and communication skills. Using social media can provide opportunities for positive connection, but there is a lack of interventions specifically designed to support safe and successful social media use after ABI.

Aims: To investigate the outcomes of completing a social media skills intervention and identify barriers and facilitators for future implementation.

Implementation of Web-Based Psychosocial Interventions for Adults With Acquired Brain Injury and Their Caregivers: Systematic Review.

Background: More than 135 million people worldwide live with acquired brain injury (ABI) and its many psychosocial sequelae. This growing global burden necessitates scalable rehabilitation services. Despite demonstrated potential to increase the accessibility and scalability of psychosocial supports, digital health interventions are challenging to implement and sustain.

Cognitive and Behavioral Digital Health Interventions for People with Traumatic Brain Injury and Their Caregivers: A Systematic Review.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) leads to cognitive linguistic deficits that significantly impact on quality of life and well-being. Digital health offers timely access to specialized services; however, there are few synthesized reviews in this field. This review evaluates and synthesizes reports of digital health interventions in TBI rehabilitation and caregiver education.

Training Resources Targeting Social Media Skills to Inform Rehabilitation for People Who Have an Acquired Brain Injury: Scoping Review.

Background: In 2020 and 2021, people increasingly used the internet to connect socially and professionally. However, people with an acquired brain injury (ABI) experience challenges in using social media, and rehabilitation professionals have reported feeling underprepared to support them in its use. To date, no review of social media skills training to inform ABI rehabilitation has been conducted.

Coproducing Knowledge of the Implementation of Complex Digital Health Interventions for Adults with Acquired Brain Injury and their Communication Partners: Protocol for a Mixed Methods Study.

Background: The Social Brain Toolkit, conceived and developed in partnership with stakeholders, is a novel suite of web-based communication interventions for people with brain injury and their communication partners. To support effective implementation, the developers of the Social Brain Toolkit have collaborated with people with brain injury, communication partners, clinicians, and individuals with digital health implementation experience to coproduce new implementation knowledge. In recognition of the equal value of experiential and academic knowledge, both types of knowledge are included in this study protocol, with input from stakeholder coauthors.

A Web-Based Service Delivery Model for Communication Training After Brain Injury: Protocol for a Mixed Methods, Prospective, Hybrid Type 2 Implementation-Effectiveness Study.

Background: Acquired brain injuries (ABIs) commonly cause cognitive-communication disorders, which can have a pervasive psychosocial impact on a person's life. More than 135 million people worldwide currently live with ABI, and this large and growing burden is increasingly surpassing global rehabilitation service capacity. A web-based service delivery model may offer a scalable solution.

Implementation of online psychosocial interventions for people with neurological conditions and their caregivers: A systematic review protocol.

Background: As the burden of neurological conditions increases globally, online psychosocial interventions offer a potentially scalable solution to enabling healthcare access. However, their successful development and implementation require research into electronic healthcare implementation specifically.

Methods: Using a search strategy combining the concepts of implementation, electronic healthcare, psychosocial interventions and neurological conditions, we will conduct comprehensive electronic searches for primary implementation evidence in MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Scopus, SpeechBITE and NeuroBITE databases.

Acceptability of telehealth-delivered rehabilitation: Experiences and perspectives of people with traumatic brain injury and their carers.

Introduction: Communication skills training for people with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and their carers is recommended best practice. Delivery via telehealth could improve access to this training. This paper focuses on the acceptability of telehealth delivery of communication skills training.

Improved Conversation Outcomes After Social Communication Skills Training for People With Traumatic Brain Injury and Their Communication Partners: A Clinical Trial Investigating In-Person and Telehealth Delivery.

Purpose The aim of the study was to investigate the effectiveness of social communication skills training (TBIconneCT) for people with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and their communication partners, delivered in-person or via telehealth, on quality of conversations. Method This study is a clinical trial, including an in-person intervention group ( 17), a telehealth intervention group ( 19), and a historical control group ( 15). Participants were adults at least 6 months post moderate-to-severe TBI with social communication skills deficits and their usual communication partners.

A Clinical Trial Investigating Telehealth and In-Person Social Communication Skills Training for People With Traumatic Brain Injury: Participant-Reported Communication Outcomes.

Objective: To investigate the efficacy of telehealth-based and in-person social communication skills training (TBIconneCT) for people with moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) based on outcomes reported by the survivor and a close communication partner.

Setting: Australia. Two telehealth dyads were located outside Australia.

The reliability of evaluating conversations between people with traumatic brain injury and their communication partners via videoconferencing.

There is growing interest in using telehealth to work with people with traumatic brain injury (TBI). This study investigated whether established rating scales for evaluating conversations of people with TBI are reliable for use over videoconferencing. Nineteen participants with TBI and their communication partners completed two conversation samples during both in-person (IP) and videoconferencing-based (VC) assessment, with randomised order of assessment.

A single case experimental design study on improving social communication skills after traumatic brain injury using communication partner telehealth training.

To investigate use of telehealth to deliver social communication skills training (TBIconneCT) to people with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) and their communication partners (CPs). Feasibility study involving single case experimental design with two participants. TBI Express is an established program for improving social interactions between people with TBI and their CPs.

Common and distinct components of communication partner training programmes in stroke, traumatic brain injury and dementia.

Background: Communication partner training (CPT) programmes for health and care staff working with people with the neurologically based communication disorders associated with stroke, traumatic brain injury (TBI) and dementia are efficacious in improving communication. However, current programmes are lengthy and disorder specific, and therefore may not be suitable as staff training tools in environments with people with multiple communication disorders, and services with a variety of neurological populations.

Aims: To identify common and distinct components of CPT programmes for stroke, TBI and dementia in order to determine whether there are common delivery methods and content that can be consolidated to improve implementation of CPT in health and care services.

Reliability of Videoconferencing Administration of a Communication Questionnaire to People With Traumatic Brain Injury and Their Close Others.

Objectives: To compare in-person with videoconferencing administration of a communication questionnaire for people with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and their close others.

Design: Repeated-measures design with randomized order of administration.

Participants: Twenty adults with severe TBI and their close others.

The effectiveness of social communication partner training for adults with severe chronic TBI and their families using a measure of perceived communication ability.

Background: Training for communication partners of people with traumatic brain injury (TBI) is efficacious when using blinded independent ratings of casual conversations measured in the clinic. However, the question remains as to whether participants with TBI and their significant other perceive changes to everyday social communication as a result of training.

Objective: To determine whether treatment focused on improving the conversational skills of everyday communication partners of people with severe TBI using a program called TBI Express resulted in improvements in perceived communicative ability as measured by the La Trobe Communication Questionnaire (LCQ).

Training communication partners of people with severe traumatic brain injury improves everyday conversations: a multicenter single blind clinical trial.

Objective: To determine effectiveness of communication training for partners of people with severe traumatic brain injury.

Design: Three arm non-randomized controlled trial comparing communication partner training (JOINT) with individual treatment (TBI SOLO) and a waitlist control group with 6 month follow-up.

Participants: Forty-four outpatients with severe chronic traumatic brain injuries were recruited.

An exploratory prospective study of the association between communication skills and employment outcomes after severe traumatic brain injury.

Primary Objective: The aim of this pilot study was to explore possible correlations between measures of functional communication skills in the first year post-injury and later employment outcome.

Design: A preliminary observational study employing a prospective longitudinal design.

Methods: Fourteen adults with traumatic brain injury completed an assessment involving two functional communication measures: an objective test of cognitive communication skills (Functional Assessment of Verbal Reasoning and Executive Strategies, FAVRES) and self-ratings of communication impairment (LaTrobe Communication Questionnaire, LCQ).