Disability and Health: A Research Agenda

Disability and Public Health, 2009

People with disabilities comprise approximately 15% of the world's population. These are people with impairments, such as visual impairment and low back pain, and health conditions such as multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury, depression and schizophrenia. This percentage is expected to increase, in part because of the worldwide ageing population and the steady increase in prevalence of chronic health conditions. More significantly, as authoritatively expressed in both the World Health Organization's (WHO) International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health [1], and the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities [2], disability is the outcome of the interaction between a person's intrinsic state of health and their physical, human-built, attitudinal and social environment. More than ever, our scientific and political understanding of disability, and what it means to live with disabilities, depends on environmental research and, in particular, the environmental determinants of disability. This Special Issue brings together a variety of perspectives on the lived experience of disability and on the nature of the impact of the environment, broadly understood, in the context of public health. It is widely known that people with disabilities tend to experience lower levels of health due, not only to their primary and secondary health conditions and comorbidities, but also to the effects of social marginalization, poverty, denial of access to health and social services and discrimination. These crucial environmental factors either create disability or worsen disability. The time has come for public health to identify and directly respond to these environmental determinants. Beyond planning, implementing and evaluating interventions, a core activity of public health is the epidemiological task of validly measuring disability across the population and tracking the health, as well as health and disability determinants, of populations. These are challenging tasks, because disability is a complex and multidimensional experience that creates substantial obstacles for description and measurement. Data about all dimensions of disability-information about impairments, restrictions of participation and the environmental factors that facilitate or hinder full participation-is essential to understand how disability plays out in people's lives and to identify ways of socially responding to this experience. This Special Issue underscores the fact that disability is a central public health issue and one of increasing importance. The articles collected here address this salient fact from different perspectives and using different methodologies and study designs. There are four, interlocking and interconnected, themes represented in these articles:

European journal of physical and rehabilitation medicine, 2012

cluding those of educational, social and rehabilitative interventions, concrete. 2) The International Classi cation of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) (39), adopted as the conceptual framework for this Report, de nes disability as an umbrella term for impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. Disability refers to the negative aspects of the interaction between individuals with a health condition (such as cerebral palsy, spinal cord injury, depression) and personal and environmental factors (such as negative attitudes, inaccessible transportation systems and public buildings, and limited social supports). The CRPD shows how its two central themes, disability and rights, are intimately interlaced: On one hand disability is a condition of life that is either permanent or temporary for millions of people 1-40 and on the other hand people with disabilities must be empowered and granted access to essential resources to be able to lead optimal lives. 8, 14-16 This moral and in the case of signatory countries to the Convention legal concreteness of this groundbreaking document is now becoming even more visible in both high resourced countries where the demand of rehabilitation, technologies, and advanced and in

Annals of Agricultural and Environmental Medicine, 2022

Importance of most frequent needs of the disabled in shaping areas of support in public health. Part II. Disability as a consequence of dysfunction in the state of health disrupting daily functioning based on selected health and socio-demographic characteristics-interdisciplinary problems in the domain of public health.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank estimates of 2011, Persons with Disabilities institute at least 15%of the worldwide population. In the framework of the EAC area, this percentage would transform into at least 18 million persons with disabilities. However, there is possibilities for average percentage to be higher in Africa because of communal, ethnic and civil war induced disability. More extremely for Africa, people with disability tend to belong to the poorest strata in culture. It is projected that on average, less than 2% of People with Disability in Africa have access to primary school education and that there are no tangible prospects for rehabilitation. Taken an example applying the WHO recommended 10 per cent to today’s Kenyan population of approximately 36 million, would indicate that there may be some 3 million disabled people. The total number of people with disabilities in Africa lives in an economic predicament and constitute a large section of those who live below the poverty line and unable to afford basic amenities. It is obvious as poverty and disability are intertwined. Many disabled people in Africa, as in most developing countries in the world, live in poverty, have limited opportunities for accessing education, health, and suitable housing and employment opportunities (ILO 2009). Defining disability is a complex and controversial task because it is a multi-dimensional concept and its definition has strong cultural influences (Mattioli, 2008). Understanding disability can be deduced from three models. Disabilities is define as a term, ensconcing impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. Disability is a multifarious occurrence, showing an interface between features of a person’s body and that of society in which he or she lives. Technically, the correct word for disability is Impairment such as not being able to function naturally. Meanwhile, disability is the term used to define impairment of ability to perform a normal daily activities. There were different types of disabilities; physical disability, intellectual disability, developmental disability and nonvisible disabilities. The context of United Nations General Assembly in 1975 adopted a Declaration, which defined “disability” and conferred social, economic, civil and political rights on people with disability. Also, the UN has adopted numerous Declarations and Conventions regulations which uphold disability rights and protection of persons with disabilities against discrimination. This lead to international recognitions of the African Union framework that persons with disabilities have equal human, civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights.

2015

Disability is an umbrella term consisting of various deprivations and capacity limitations of people. As it generally decelerates the overall performance of people and society, it demands constant assessment. The definitions and classification should be done properly. The present paper makes a detailed conceptual overview of the concepts and classification of disability. The diverse instances of disabilities points out to the urgency for comprehensive policy action covering multiple aspects of livelihood vulnerability. In several cases disability serves as a feeding ground for poverty and other forms of discrimination. Hence it underscores the robust initiatives from the government to address the issue with due recognition.

International Journal of Telerehabilitation, 2011

In June, 2011 at the United Nations (UN) in New York City, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank launched the first World Report on Disability. This short overview of the Report provides information about its purpose, development and content, intended audiences, and outcomes. Special attention is directed to the sections of the Report which address telerehabilitation and information and communication technology.

2018