Rehabilitation Sciences

Contact: jcollett@brookes.ac.uk +44 (0)1865 483630

About us

The Rehabilitation Sciences theme focuses on developing and evaluating exercise interventions and exercise response in health and disease.

Our research covers a range of populations and settings, from community services for sedentary people to physiological/neurophysiological investigations in the lab. It focuses on adults and children with neurological and degenerative conditions.

Research associated to this theme stood central to the last Research Excellence Framework return, both as scientific outputs as well as part of an extensive impact case study, both rated as world-leading and internationally excellent.

People with neurological conditions exercising in a gym under supervision

Part of

Related courses

Applied Sport and Exercise Nutrition (MSc / PGDip / PGCert)
Physiotherapy (Pre-Registration) (MSc)
Physiotherapy (BSc (Hons))
Sport and Exercise Science (BSc (Hons))
Sport, Coaching and Physical Education (BSc (Hons))

Research impact

The research carried out by our interdisciplinary team has enabled people with long-term conditions take part in physical activity and exercise. Supported by over 26 external competitive grants, we have provided evidence and developed interventions for safe effective exercise, across a number of conditions, producing over 50 peer reviewed publications.

Our research has improved understanding of dose response and safe effective delivery of exercise in the community. It has also revealed disease specific altered exercise response and recovery profiles.

Recently we were part of the project leadership developing the Moving medicine consultation guide for Parkinson’s. We also worked with OLT Ltd (a training provider for teachers) on their dyspraxia and developmental co-ordination disorder course, incorporating content on:

exercise
activities
interventions to help improve fitness and co-ordination.

Leadership

Dr Johnny Collett

Reader in Clinical Exercise and Rehabilitation

View profile

Resources

An example Exercise Workbook that directed the exercise programme and acted as a diary for the participant to record their progress in our study on a self-managed community exercise programme for people with Parkinson's. (Collett J, et al, (2016) Phase II randomised controlled trial of a 6-month self-managed community exercise programme for people with Parkinson’s disease. JNNP)

Example of exercise workbook used in our Parkinson's study (PDF)

An example Handwriting Workbook that contains writing activities which participants can practice at home. This intervention was used for the control group in our study investigating exercise for people with Parkinson's and produced some interesting findings in its own right. (Collett J, et al (2017) A long-term self-managed handwriting intervention for people with Parkinson’s disease: results from the control group of a phase II randomized controlled trial. Clin Rebili)

Example of handwriting workbook used in our Parkinson's study (PDF)

Courses

We aim to disseminate the research results via courses linked to the Centre for Movement, Occupational and Rehabilitation Sciences (MOReS), such as our CPD courses.

For example, the Level 7 Exercise Prescription for Long-Term Neurological Conditions course that uses national occupational standards we developed to train exercise and health care professionals to support people with long-term neurological condition to exercise.