OSAKA FORUM
The 12th Rehabilitation International Asia and the Pacific Regional Conference
The Social Commission Seminar " What is Disability: Recent Development of the Concept and Its Impact on Policy and Intervention"
October 22, 2002
Osaka, Japan

International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) and its Practical Implication

Abstract

Professor Hisao Sato

Japan College of Social Work, Japan

In May 2001, the World Health Assembly of the WHO approved the final version of the new International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). It was more than 20 years since the first version, the ICIDH, the International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities and Handicaps, was published in 1980. And more than 10 years since the inception of the revision activities of the ICIDH initiated by WHO with the first experts meeting on the ICIDH held in November 1990 in Strasburg, France. Now an acronym ICF is officially used instead of ICIDH or ICIDH-2, the latter has been widely used to designate various draft versions for new ICIDH, but now abandoned.

ICF has moved away from a "consequences of disease" model of ICIDH to a "man and environment interaction" model in understanding the disability phenomenon. ICF reflects not only the negative aspects (Disability) but also the positive aspects (Functioning) of human being. The neutrality of ICF assures equal priority for physical and mental impairments/disabilities.

ICIDH had impacted disability policies and direct intervention through its (a) separation of disability and disease, (b) identification of three dimensions of disablement, and (c) understanding the "relative independence" (Satoshi Ueda) between dimensions. ICF inherited these strengths.

With many improvements such as introduction of Environmental Factors in the model as well as the classification, use of positive terms, operational definitions in each of more than 1400 categories, etc., ICF will have more great impact. And ICF will hopefully be used not only as the model but also as a tool to describe the detail situation of persons with a disability. In this paper I will discuss on ICIDH and its revision process, conceptual framework of ICF, classifications of Body Functions and Structure, Activities and participation and Environmental Factors, and application of ICF in policies and rehabilitation.