Rethinking Scale-Up of Rehabilitation for Chronic Disease in Low-Resource Settings: Embracing Complexity for Contextual Impact

Abstract

As the burden of chronic disease and multiple long-term conditions is increasing globally, disproportionally affecting those in low-resourced settings, there is an increasing call to action to scale effective models of care that can assist in mitigating the impact of chronic disease on functioning, activity, societal participation, and health-related quality of life. The aim of this paper is to unpack the contextual factors that have been implicitly and explicitly voiced by researchers reporting on rehabilitation interventions used to manage chronic disease in low-resourced settings. We systematically engaged the literature and applied a reflexive qualitative and systems thinking lens to unpack the contextual factors and their interplay. A total of 40 different contextual factors were derived through an iterative analysis of 144 eligible articles. The identified factors could be packaged into nine system elements or subsystems relevant to the scale-up of rehabilitation for people with chronic disease. The complexity identified encourages a focus on innovative and intersectoral approaches to address the rehabilitation needs in low-resourced settings.