Won’t You Be My Neighbor? How Neighborhood Factors Affect Life After Traumatic Brain Injury

The Social Model of Disability indicates that disability occurs as a result of the interaction between a person and their environment. Despite this, research to understand TBI as a chronic condition with resulting disability overwhelmingly focuses only on characteristics and factors within the person (such as demographics, cognitive ability, etc.), and not characteristics of the environments in which people live, work, and play. Our two speakers will discuss how environmental factors, specifically characteristics of a person’s neighborhood, affect outcomes after TBI. They will highlight findings from a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation on this topic and discuss how attending to these environmental factors is essential if we are to consider TBI from the lens of a Social Model – rather than a Medical Model – of disability.