Return to Work after Burn Injury Website Dissemination Project

During past NIDRR BMS funding cycles, we have focused on identifying patients’ barriers to returning to work. To advance our long-term efforts of facilitating return to work, we will utilize internet technology to establish a web-based dissemination effort to provide education regarding challenges and processes encountered following a significant burn injury. The target audience for this collaborative dissemination project will includes burn survivors, families, employers, medical professionals, case managers, third-party payers, Worker’s Compensation and vocational rehabilitation agencies. We anticipate that such a site will benefit patients from our rural catchment areas including Native American communities. Because our largest non-English speaking patient cohort is Hispanic, we plan to offer all web-based consumer information in English and Spanish. With the collective experience of experts in vocational rehabilitation, web-design and knowledge translation, we are prepared to build a site that provides multiple resources to our stakeholders with links to outside agencies. Because evaluation of the applicability and accessibility of the website will be critical, we will collaborate with the NIDRR-funded MSKTC for ongoing assessment of the utility of our dissemination effort.