ENGAGe Blog

ENGAGe in partnership with WHO

ENGAGe has been in closer partnership with WHO, firstly regarding the campaign of prevention of HPV. Now, another common topic appeared as WHO approached ENGAGe regarding the Rehabilitation program. Moreover, ENGAGe Co-Chair, Icó Tóth was the speaker at the WHO webinar on Palliative care in June 2021.

WHO Rehabilitation Programme is currently working on the development of a Package of Interventions for Rehabilitation (PIR) which goes hand in hand with the ENGAGe Quality-of-Life series project (focused on Sexual health this year).

Ms. Icó Tóth (ENGAGe Co-Chair, Mallow flower association, Hungary) and Ms. Sara Martinez Ríos (Spain, ASACO) will represent ENGAGe at the Development groups which regroups people representing all professions relevant for providing functioning interventions to people with Cancer, from all WHO regions, and from low- to high-resource contexts. The perspective of people having experienced cancer complement the Development Group as their perspective as considered as most important for the development process.

Ms. Kim Hulscher (Olijf, The Netherlands) and Ms. Maria Papageorgiou (K.E.F.I., Greece) were asked to cooperate within the Peer Review Group. The Peer Review Group will be responsible to review the draft package, created by the Development Group.

 

 

The PIR will provide relevant information on interventions for rehabilitation to support ministries of health in planning, budgeting, and integrating evidence-based rehabilitation into health systems. The interventions to be included in this PIR need to be evidence-based addressing impairments, activity limitations and participation restrictions, as well as personal and environmental factors (including assistive technology) that have an impact on functioning. Thus, the PIR will provide sets of interventions designed to optimize functioning and reduce disability in individuals with health conditions in interaction with their environment.  (https://www.who.int/activities/integrating-rehabilitation-into-health-systems/service-delivery/package-of-interventions-for-rehabilitation) with more information on this project and the overall Rehabilitation 2030 agenda.

 

For the development of the PIR, health conditions related to different disease areas have been selected. Cancer was selected due to the high prevalence and related level of disability and thus, the huge need for access to rehabilitation to improve functioning and reduce disability in people living with Cancer.