14th World Congress on Brain Injury Abstracts

BACKGROUND: Concussion, the mildest form of traumatic brain injury, is an important public health concern due to high healthcare costs because of post-concussion symptoms (PCS). The majority of affected individuals apparently recover from the concussion within 1-3 months, but up to a third develop persistent PCS lasting more than 3 months. PCS is associated with substantial ongoing disability and distress. Recognition is growing that PCS is best understood in terms of an interaction between biological, psychological and social factors. However, evidence for effective non-pharmacological treatment strategies is scarce. Brief tele-health interventions to prevent prolonged PCS have demonstrated promising results and are likely to be cost-effective. Recently, the effect of a novel intervention “Get going After concussIoN” (GAIN) for people with persistent severe PCS was examined, showing a significantly larger reduction in PCS in the intervention group 3 months post-intervention than in the control group. Adapting the treatment principles and developing a down-scaled version of GAIN for adults with persistent mild to moderate PCS is hence warranted.
OBJECTIVE: To present the adaption and development processes of the intervention GAIN Lite; a digital intervention aimed at preventing cornification among adults with mild to moderate post-concessional symptoms.
DESIGN: An iterative method based on the UK Medical Research Council’s framework for developing and evaluating complex interventions combined with guidance for adapting interventions to new contexts guided the overall process. The approach was target-population based.
SETTING: GAIN Lite was developed in the Central Denmark Region and led by Hammel Neurorehabilitation Centre and University Research Clinic in collaboration with a broad range of stakeholders; people having had a concussion; therapists delivering the intervention; researchers and various experts, namely the people behind the original GAIN study.
RESULTS: The intervention has two major components: 1) six e-learning videos with a total duration of 50 minutes, and 2) up to four individual online sessions with a maximum duration of 60 minutes each.
CONCLUSIONS: A systematic approach has been applied in the development process. Transparency in the development processes of GAIN Lite may improve prerequisites for research and clinical implementation. The GAIN Lite intervention will be developed over a two-year period, from January 2021 to January 2023, before implementation into a randomized clinical trial.