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.