Table 3 Narrative of CRE-Stroke

Unmet need (as of 2014 when CRE-Stroke commenced)

There were an estimated 440,000 people living with stroke in Australia, costing almost AU$ 5 billion yearly to treat. There was little definitive evidence on what interventions work best for which patients, under what circumstances. International stroke rehabilitation research efforts were fragmented and rarely underpinned by sound neuroscience. Building evidence-based treatments for rehabilitation was a major global priority, requiring a coordinated effort at national and international levels. However, there was a lack of consensus about how research should be designed and measurement parameters within research studies (timing, use of consistent rehabilitation outcomes), limiting the ability to compare and pool data. There was also a lack of research translation capacity to extend stroke rehabilitation research into the future. Consumers were not consistently engaged in guiding research priorities, and there was a lack of structure to build the next generation of stroke rehabilitation researchers.

Response

Initiatives were developed to address identified needs by transforming stroke rehabilitation research and practice, creating a training and mentoring culture for the next generation of stroke rehabilitation researchers, and facilitating the translation of proven cost-effective stroke rehabilitation interventions to benefit all Australians.

CRE resources were spent on the following key activities:

• training in clinical trials and grant writing

• opportunities for consumer, carer, policy and industry input into stroke rehabilitation research

• clinical stipends to build capacity amongst clinician researchers

• professional development of the next generation of stroke rehabilitation researchers including travel and study grants and leadership and networking opportunities

• coordination of international stroke roundtables to achieve consensus, collaboration and comparability across many aspects of stroke rehabilitation research

• exposure to current thinking around research translation, implementation and impact through workshops, webinars and forums

• setting up a volunteer stroke registry

• setting up a stroke biobank

• seed funding for various stroke rehabilitation research projects

• supporting CRE-affiliate involvement in the Living Stroke Guidelines

Outputs

• 354 stroke rehabilitation academic publications

• 625 conference presentations (250 at international events)

• 2778 followers of CRE Twitter account (32 unique curators, disseminated 3443 tweets)

• 393 subscribers to CRE newsletters (31 external and 20 internal editions)

• Coordinated 59 capacity-building events, attended by 788 affiliates including researchers, policy-makers and consumers, with 5144 individual occurrences and 9321 hours of capacity-building

• Supported financially or in-kind 26 PhD students (81% female) and 39 postdoctoral fellows (69% female) and administered 7 clinical stipends

• The Stroke Recovery and Rehabilitation Roundtable series of events produced 10 publications

• The Stroke Research Register has over 600 registered stroke survivors available for clinical trials

Impacts

Given the extensive evidence of impact obtained from the various data sources, the impact is reported in the main body of the paper both in the Payback metrics (Table1) and below