Appendix AStatement of Task

Publication Details

A planning committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will organize and host a one-and-a-half-day public workshop that will facilitate a discussion focused on the World Health Organization’s concept of functioning and its role in rethinking the concept of health, with a focus on healthy aging and the future of rehabilitation as a health strategy. The workshop will include presentations on: challenges in operationalizing function as a measure in health policy, rethinking disability as a universal human experience, and discussing a feasible public health agenda that addresses the increasing relevance of rehabilitation for the 21st century.

The workshop will feature invited presentations and panel discussions on topics such as:

  • The World Health Organization’s concept of functioning in the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF);
  • Moving beyond traditional health outcome measures and operationalizing functioning as a measure of health;
  • Standardizing and routinely collecting functioning data in health information systems;
  • Ways to integrate functioning into public health strategies for healthy aging and healthy longevity;
  • Disability from the perspective of functioning: a universal human experience as well as a discrete social group seeking equity;
  • Epidemiology of functioning: the consequences of using functioning as the third health indicator augmenting mortality and morbidity;
  • How demographic and epidemiological projections are shaping the future of public health in the context of functioning;
  • Conceptualizing and operationalizing rehabilitation as the health strategy that aims to optimize functioning, which could serve as the basis for scaling rehabilitation in the 21st century;
  • Functioning and person-centered care: the lived experience of health;
  • Functioning and value-based health care.

The planning committee will develop the agenda for the workshop sessions, select and invite speakers and discussants, and moderate the discussions. A proceeding of the presentations and discussions at the workshop shall be prepared by a designated rapporteur in accordance with institutional guidelines.