Community Stroke Rehabilitation Teams and Social Deprivation: Challenges and Perspectives

Social deprivation is associated with worse functional recovery and social participation after stroke. Home-based, individualized rehabilitation provided by Community Stroke Rehabilitation Teams (CSRTs) improves these outcomes. This study aimed to show that CSRTs offered an effective specific rehabilitation for socially deprived patients.

This was a retrospective study conducted in real-care conditions. Social deprivation was assessed by the Evaluation de la Précarité et des Inégalités de santé dans les Centres d'Examens de Santé score. The outcome questionnaires included the Frenchay Activity Index (FAI) and the EuroQol-5Dimension. We compared these outcomes between deprived and non-deprived (ND) populations. Rehabilitation of the deprived population was assessed by comparing interventions across both groups.

We included 198 deprived patients and 140 ND patients. Deprived patients were more often women (p = 0.027), more likely to live alone at home (p = 0.01), and were referred later to a CSRT, despite having greater activity limitations at baseline (p < 0.001). They also had a lower FAI at baseline (13.2 vs. 16.6; p = 0.007). Although their FAI improved over time (+2.4 ± 5.5; p < 0.001), the improvement was modest and insufficient to close the gap with the ND group (15.7 vs. 20.7; p < 0.001). Regarding program characteristics, the deprived population received input from a greater number of healthcare professionals (2.7 ± 1.2 vs 2.4 ± 1.3; p = 0.017) and more often from the intervention "Health professional relationship" (34.2% vs 15.6%; p = 0.005).

These findings highlight the intersectionality of stroke-related challenges and the critical need to design post-stroke rehabilitation strategies that are more equitable and responsive to gender and social determinants of health.