Appendix

Workshop Agenda

Workshop on Health and Disability Among Working-Age Adults:
Trends, Disparities, and Implications for Employment and Federal Programs

The Keck Center, 500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001

OCTOBER 15, 2024

SESSION 1
DEFINING, CONCEPTUALIZING, AND MEASURING DISABILITY; DATA NEEDS

Guiding Questions:

• What are the conceptual and technical challenges in measuring disability and estimating disability prevalence for the working age population?
• How do alternative definitions and measurement approaches affect estimates for specific populations?

• What measures are most appropriate for different purposes—e.g., population monitoring, establishing eligibility for programs, informing policies, international comparability in reporting, etc.?
• What are the key data and infrastructure needs for improving measures/statistics. How can existing data investments, particularly in longitudinal sources, be enhanced to better study disability in working age populations and how it tracks with work experiences/trajectories?
• For understanding disparities between disabled and non-disabled people, what frameworks are available for measuring health disparities that are specific to the disability context?
  
  

SESSION 2
PERIOD AND COHORT TRENDS IN DISABLING MORBIDITY—HEALTH AND MEDICAL DRIVERS

Guiding Questions:

• Among the working-age population, what are the health-related factors driving trends and disparities in disability and disabling morbidity (e.g., obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, physical and psychological pain)?
• What impacts have COVID-19 and long COVID-19 had on projected trends in disability?
• What countervailing trends have emerged for different age/demographic groups?
• What do the various longitudinal data sources reveal?
• How are disability trends interacting with those for other health and risk factors?
  
  

SESSION 3
POPULATION DISPARITIES

Guiding Questions:

• How does the timing, types, and severity of disability and disabling morbidity differ across minoritized populations? How prevalent are early onset disabilities for different groups?
• By what pathways do structural racism/sexism and disadvantage contribute to these differences in disability, and in ableism?
• How are inequalities in disability and mortality changing across education levels? How do these inequalities contribute to differential employment opportunities/outcomes and to occurrence of other types of disability?
• What are the unique challenges to immigrant populations? To what extent are immigrant workers likely to be working in vulnerable occupations (such as care work) and at risk of injury? What access to immigrants of different statuses have to disability programs?
• Maternal morbidity as a source of midlife health disadvantage—how are earlier life events linked to midlife?
  
  

OCTOBER 16, 2024
ROOM 100 AND WEBCAST

SESSION 4
CONTEXTUAL FACTORS: POLICY INFLUENCES ON MORBIDITY AND DISABILITY

Guiding Questions:

• What is the impact of the changing policy landscape (including public health and safety net programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and SSA/SSDI) on the disabling effects of chronic illness and injuries?
• How does disability prevalence vary across regions and states within the United States?
• How can natural experiments, such as those created by state-by-state variation in policies or environment, contribute to our understanding of the causal relationship between contextual and structural factors on disability severity and benefit program enrollment?
• How do changes in the supply of and type of housing and other aspects of the built environment affect disability prevalence?
  
  

SESSION 5
WORKFORCE AND WORKPLACE TRENDS IN DISABILITY AND DISABILITY POLICY

Guiding Questions:

• How have functional needs required for work changed over time? How have these changes affected the occupational distribution of workers with disabilities and disability-related unemployment?
• What are the key facilitators to inclusion of individuals with disabilities in the workforce, including workplace accommodations and employment/benefit policies.
• To what extent have COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 era changes to the nature of the workplace affected disability prevalence overall and by occupation?
• What policies and practices—both positive and exploitive (e.g., subminimum wages)—affect employment of individuals with intellectual or other severe disabilities?

• What have been the effects of programs and disability policies on workers’ participation and well-being (e.g., the effectiveness of the ADA in ensuring employer accommodations and assessing effectiveness). How do the outcomes of U.S. policies compare with those enacted in other countries?
  
  

SESSION 6
SYNTHESIS AND TAKEAWAYS—RESEARCH GAPS, DATA AND MEASUREMENT NEEDS, POLICY DIRECTIONS

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