Rehabilitation Background
The World Health Organization has declared rehabilitation to be the health strategy of the 21st century in view of the aging population and the epidemiological challenge of non-communicable diseases. Despite the fact that rehabilitation in Germany is anchored in social law, the academic representation of rehabilitation is still unsatisfactory in an international comparison. In health policy, too, there is a lack of a strong actor that bundles the interests and concerns of the numerous small professional societies and working groups active in rehabilitation medicine.
The Scientific Medical Alliance for Rehabilitation (WMAR) was founded to strengthen the voice of rehabilitation medicine in academia and with key health policy institutions.
Aims and objectives
As an alliance of professional societies that consider rehabilitation to be their field of work, the WMAR aims to develop and represent common positions.
To this end, the WMAR aims to coordinate the work of the individual professional societies with regard to overarching goals and to strengthen and raise awareness of rehabilitation issues among all important actors in the German health care system. The general importance of rehabilitation for health and functional ability must be made clear. It must be made clear that rehabilitation is not only about measures taken by individual rehabilitation providers for a few weeks at a time.
Fields of action
The fields of action of WMAR are
Science and teaching, in particular guidelines (e.g. coordination and use of synergies in the development of guidelines), quality assurance in teaching (including the inclusion of rehabilitation in the National Competence-Based Learning Objectives Catalogue of Medicine and the subject catalogues) and securing rehabilitation at universities (e.g. chairs for rehabilitation medicine).
Improving the quality of rehabilitation on the basis of scientific evidence in cooperation with rehabilitation providers.
Public relations for rehabilitation by communicating the increasing importance of rehabilitation and the duality of the concept of rehabilitation (health strategy vs. interventions).
Health policy to improve the integration of rehabilitation in the health care system.
