ICF: Global Framework Mainstreams Disability, Creates Common Language for Healthcare

The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF), developed under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO), shines an entirely new light on disability. Instead of viewing disability as a category of a social minority, the ICF mainstreams it as a universal human experience. “[The ICF] acknowledges that every human being can experience a decrement in health and thereby experience some disability. Previously, disability began where health ended; once you were disabled, you were in a separate category,” according to WHO. “By placing the capacity aspects of disability on a continuum with health, ICF makes it possible to measure health and disability with the same domains of functioning.”