Alphonsus Chong's Personal Wiki

WHO, 2002

• classification of health and health-related domains
  • based on a list of body functions and structure, and a list of domains of activity and participation.
• tool to allow standardized reporting - complements ICD-10

In ICF, the term functioning refers to all body functions, activities and participation, while disability is similarly an umbrella term for impairments, activity limitations and participation restrictions. ICF also lists environmental factors that interact with all these components.

  functions / structure 
  activities 
  participation
     ^
     |
     |
(Environment)

ICF is named as it is because of its stress is on health and functioning , rather than on disability. Previously, disability began where health ended; once you were disabled, you where in a separate category. We want to get away from this kind of thinking. We want to make ICF a tool for measuring functioning in society, no matter what the reason for one's impairments. So it becomes a much more versatile tool with a much broader area of use than a traditional classification of health and disability. This is a radical shift. From emphasizing people's disabilities, we now focus on their level of health.

By shifting the focus from cause to impact it places all health conditions on an equal footing allowing them to be compared using a common metric – the ruler of health and disability.

There is also an increased recognition among social planners and service agencies that reductions in the incidence and severity of disability in a population can be brought about both by enhancing the functional capacity of the person and by improving performance by modifying features of the social and physical environment. To analyze the impact of these different interventions, we need a way of classifying domains of areas of life as well as the environmental factors that improve performance. ICF allows us to record this information.

• For the assessment of individuals: What is the person's level of functioning?
• For individual treatment planning: What treatments or interventions can maximize functioning?
• For the evaluation of treatment and other interventions: What are the outcomes of the treatment? How useful were the interventions?  
• For communication among physicans, nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and other health works, social service works and commmunity agencies
• For self-evaluation by consumers: How would I rate my capacity in mobility or

communication

• Medical model - disability caused by diesease, trauma or health condition –> needs medical or other 'intervention' to correct the problem
• Social model - socially created problem - needs political response to change physical and social environment
• Biopsychosocial model

WHO. (2002). Towards a Common Language for Functioning, Disability and Health ICF (p. 23). WHO. https://www.who.int/classifications/icf/icfbeginnersguide.pdf?ua=1

• 2020-10-11 Created