In this ground-breaking collection, leading experts in the field address the problems of parents, intervenors, and professionals who work with people who have been deafblind since birth or from a very early age. Individuals who are congenitally deafblind face the same challenges as those who become deafblind later in life, but they have not had the same opportunity to develop the communications skills and a conceptual base needed to construct an understanding of the world. The contributors address identification of deafblindness, planning and intervention, development, family support, and education. Just as McInnes and Treffry's "Deafblind Infants and Children" helped to change the approach to and the perception of deafblind children, this collection will assist in fostering a new approach to the education of and support for older children, youth and adults who are deafblind. An essential part of this process is to set forth standards for program development, implementation, and evaluation, which this volume aims to accomplish. It will make an essential contribution to the expanding field of services for the deafblind population of all ages, and to the improved understanding of parents, family members, and professionals who support them.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Before new interventions are released into disease control programmes, it is essential that they are carefully evaluated in field trials'. These may be complex and expensive undertakings, requiring the follow-up of hundreds, or thousands, of individuals, often for long periods. Descriptions of the detailed procedures and methods used in the trials that have been conducted have rarely been published. A consequence of this, individuals planning such trials have few guidelines available and little access to knowledge accumulated previously, other than their own. In this manual, practical issues in trial design and conduct are discussed fully and in sufficient detail, that Field Trials of Health Interventions may be used as a toolbox' by field investigators. It has been compiled by an international group of over 30 authors with direct experience in the design, conduct, and analysis of field trials in low and middle income countries and is based on their accumulated knowledge and experience. Available as an open access book via Oxford Medicine Online, this new edition is a comprehensive revision, incorporating the new developments that have taken place in recent years with respect to trials, including seven new chapters on subjects ranging from trial governance, and preliminary studies to pilot testing.