Where in Health is Disability? Public Health Practices to Include People with Disabilities

This session of Grand Rounds explored opportunities for optimal quality of life for individuals with disabilities. One in 6 adult Americans lives with a disability when defined by a limitation in function. Many are at higher risk for multiple chronic conditions, injuries, and increased vulnerability during disasters. Comparatively, people with disabilities are 4 times more likely to report their health to be fair/poor and 2.5 times more likely to have unmet health care needs than non–disabled peers. $400 billion is spent annually on disability-related health expenditures. Public health can help change this by promoting wellness and preventing disease in people with disabilities. CDC′s approach for a population who experiences diverse functional limitations is to assure that mainstream public health surveys, programs, and policies include people with disabilities across the lifespan, a method that can be modeled by state and federal programs.

This powerful session of Grand Rounds explored public health opportunities for disease prevention, intervention and improvement to enable people to live well with functional limitations. We also highlighted accomplishments of partners and public health agencies in creating and modifying health programs to accommodate people with disabilities.