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Childhood acquired brain injury (ABI) is associated with poorer life outcomes. Increasing numbers of children and young people are surviving severe brain injury and returning to mainstream schools with multiple impairments. It is widely acknowledged that for these children, their school becomes by default their rehabilitation centre. International studies of this transition and a recent UK government report criticize educators' inconsistent implementation of support strategies, lack of educator training and poor communication between clinicians, educators, child and family. The educators' perspectives of the return‐to‐school are, however, not well represented in the literature. This study therefore explored the experiences of educators in the UK (N = 10) who had recently facilitated a return‐to‐school of a child with ABI aged 8–12 (N = 5) using semi‐structured interviews analysed by data‐driven thematic analysis. The findings highlight common experiences: a continuum of intensive problem‐solving with heavy reliance on the Special Educational Needs Coordinator; educators valuing collaboration with clinical specialists in context over general 'training'; uncertainty over the validity of implementing support strategies from prior teaching experience; uncertainty about how to support the child's emotional needs; and frustration with UK statutory processes for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. Recommendations are made for changes to practice and future research.

AbstractAlthough research including biological concepts and variables has gained more prominence in sociology, progress assimilating the organ of experience, the brain, has been theoretically and technically challenging. Formal uptake and assimilation have thus been slow. Within psychology and neuroscience, the traditional brain, which has made brief appearances in sociological research, is a "bottom–up" processor in which sensory signals are passed up the neural hierarchy where they are eventually cognitively and emotionally processed, after which actions and responses are generated. In this paper, we introduce the Active Inference Framework (AIF), which casts the brain as a Bayesian "inference engine" that tests its "top–down" predictive models against "bottom–up" sensory error streams in its attempts to resolve uncertainty and make the world more predictable. After assembling and presenting key concepts in the AIF, we describe an integrated neuro-bio-social model that prioritizes the microsociological assertion that the scene of action is the situation, wherein brains enculturate. Through such social dynamics, enculturated brains share models of the world with one another, enabling collective realities that disclose the actions afforded in those times and places. We conclude by discussing this neuro-bio-social model within the context of exemplar sociological research areas, including the sociology of stress and health, the sociology of emotions, and cognitive cultural sociology, all areas where the brain has received some degree of recognition and incorporation. In each case, sociological insights that do not fit naturally with the traditional brain model emerge intuitively from the predictive AIF model, further underscoring the interconnections and interdependencies between these areas, while also providing a foundation for a probabilistic sociology.

The Manitoba Centre for Health Policy's Concept Dictionary and Glossary, and the Data Repository they document, broaden the analytic possibilities associated with administrative data. The aim of the Repository is to describe and explain patterns of health care and illness, while the Concept Dictionary and Glossary create consistency in documenting research methodologies. The Concept Dictionary alone contains detailed operational definitions and programming code for measures used in MCHP research that are reusable in future projects. Making these tools available on the internet allows reaching a heterogeneous audience of academic and government health service partners, epidemiologists, planners, programmers, clinicians, and students extending around the globe. They aid in the retention of corporate knowledge, facilitate researcher/analyst communication, and enhance the Centre's knowledge translation activities. Such documentation has saved countless hours for programmers, analysts and researchers who frequently need to tread paths previously taken by others.

OBJECTIVE: To profile the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy (MCHP), a population health data centre located at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. APPROACH: We describe how MCHP was established and funded, and how it continues to operate based on a foundation of trust and respect between researchers at the University of Manitoba and stakeholders in the Manitoba Government's Department of Health. MCHP's research priorities are jointly determined by its scientists' own research interests and by questions put forward from Manitoba government ministries. Data governance, data privacy, data linkage processes and data access are discussed in detail. We also provide three illustrative examples of the MCHP Data Repository in action, demonstrating how studies using a variety of Repository datasets have had an impact on health and social policies and programs in Manitoba. DISCUSSION: MCHP has experienced tremendous growth over the last three decades. We discuss emerging research directions as the capacity for innovation at MCHP continues to expand, including a focus on natural language processing and other applications of artificial intelligence techniques, a leadership role in the new SPOR Canadian Data Platform, and a foray into social policy evaluation and analysis. With these and other exciting opportunities on the horizon, the future at MCHP looks exceptionally bright.