Providing evidence-based services in areas with emerging or low-level evidence is a challenge for many clinicians. The aim of the current study was to apply a newly designed novel methodology to develop and describe a new intervention for cognitive-communication reading comprehension deficits in early acquired brain injury rehabilitation.

An emergent multi-phase mixed methods design allowed phases of different research activity to build an evidence base of quantitative and qualitative data. A pragmatic clinical framework was developed to combine these traditional research findings with principles from knowledge translation and implementation science, evidence-based practice and intervention development models, clinical contextual practice guidelines and the Medical Research Council’s guidelines for developing and evaluating complex interventions, to create an evidence-based contextually driven clinical intervention.

The resulting reading comprehension intervention and service delivery model is presented and involves a multiple-strategy intervention across increasing level of reading comprehension complexity. In areas where traditional methodologies provide low-level evidence, this method provides an alternate way to conduct evidence-based clinical research.