Disability inclusion at CDC - a progress report

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) established an initiative in 2010 to mainstream disability into the agency's public health activities. The mission of the disability inclusion initiative is to reduce disparities in the availability and accessibility of public health activities for people with functional disabilities. There are four major goals: Integrate mechanisms to determine disability status in public health surveillance systems to identify health differences; Improve the participation of people with disabilities in non-research programs conducted or sponsored by CDC; Increase awareness that disability is a risk factor for preventable disease, injury, and loss of function, and; Provide accessible health communications and messaging to people with disabilities. Among the accomplishments of this program are: A standard set of HHS-sanctioned disability questions were added to the 2013 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System questionnaire; A CDC-wide symposium was convened on the utility of including disability status as a risk factor in epidemiologic research; The Task Force for Community Preventive Services approved linkages from its website to a disability information resource website to support accessibility of recommended interventions; The Task Force for Community Preventive Services agreed to include considerations of accessibility of interventions to people with disability in its systematic reviews; Disability was included as a reported demographic variable in the 2011 CDC Health Disparities and Inequalities Report; Disability will be included as a reported demographic variable in the 2013 CDC Health Disparities and Inequalities Report. Progress is being made within the agency in mainstreaming disability.