Enabling Environments and Acquired Brain Injury
The Hopkins Centre recently facilitated two events which brought people with lived experience of Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) together with Hopkins researchers to discuss the impact of different Environments on people with ABI. The events included in-depth discussions and workshops, and sparked ideas for future research directions regarding environments and rehabilitation following ABI.
Three main themes emerged from these conversations. The strongest theme was the importance of exposure to- and immersion in- natural environments during an individual’s rehabilitation journey.
Also significant was the need for environments that can be flexible and able to provide both safe, restorative spaces, while also be able to introduce elements that increase the level of ‘challenge’ over an individual’s rehabilitation process. The third main theme that emerged was discussion of what ‘discretionary’ activities individuals with ABI want to return post-injury (and how environments facilitate or prevent this) versus participation in new activities.
These discussions were incredibly valuable and have helped to refine the focus of emerging projects within Research Program 2 (Enabling Technologies and Environments).
