Toward a Common Language for Function, Disability, and Health

Abstract

Within physical therapy, the disablement model has proven useful as a language to delineate the consequences of disease and injury. This perspective provides an update on the changing language of disablement, reviews selected contemporary disablement models, and discusses some challenges that need to be addressed to achieve a universal disablement language that can be used to discuss physical therapy research and clinical interventions. The World Health Organization’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) framework has the potential of becoming a standard for disablement language that looks beyond mortality and disease to focus on how people live with their conditions. If widely adopted, the ICF framework could provide the rehabilitation field with a common, international language with the potential to facilitate communication and scholarly discourse across disciplines and national boundaries, to stimulate interdisciplinary research, to improve clinical care, and ultimately to better inform health policy and management.

Metabolites related to gut bacterial metabolism, peroxisome proliferator‐activated receptor‐alpha activation, and insulin sensitivity are associated with physical function in functionally‐limited older adults

“…Disability, defined as a limited ability to perform regular activities of daily living (Jette, 2006), increases with advancing age (Launer et al, 1994) and is predictive of future hospitalization, institutionalization, and mortality (Harris et al, 1989), thereby placing an increased demand on the healthcare system. Skeletal muscle strength, lower extremity function, and mobility are each associated with disability risk in older adults (Guralnik et al, 1994;Newman et al, 2006;Puthoff & Nielsen, 2007).…”

Gender, educational and ethnic differences in active life expectancy among older Singaporeans

“…Ethnic differences, favoring those of Chinese ethnicity, in chronic diseases, healthy behaviors and preventive healthcare use over the life course, which in the disablement process are considered as risk factors for the development of functional disability (including limitations in ADL and IADL), likely underlie the lower transition from active to inactive for those of Chinese, versus non-Chinese, ethnicity. 30,31 For example, the Singapore National Health Survey 2010 reported that among adults aged 18-69 years, the prevalence of diabetes mellitus, obesity and abdominal fatness was the lowest for Chinese, and that of hypertension, high blood cholesterol, daily cigarette smoking and non-engagement in regular exercise was lower in Chinese than Malays. 32 Furthermore, the survey reported the prevalence of screening for diabetes mellitus, hypertension and high blood cholesterol to be higher among Chinese relative to Malays.…”

Clinical Case Reporting in the Peer‐Reviewed Physical Therapy Literature: Time to Move Toward Functioning

“…The ICF model has been advocated as advantageous to clinical research and practice in physical therapy (Jette, 2006;Godges and Irrgang, 2008), including to organize clinical reasoning in educational settings (Atkinson and Nixon-Cave, 2011). This feature makes the ICF model potentially appealing to structure case reporting in the rehabilitation peer reviewed literature.…”

“…At this time, however, physical therapy journals do not have uniform guidelines about reporting patient functioning. Over the past 10 years, the ICF model has emerged as a popular way to characterize patient functioning in physical therapy (Jette, 2006). The feasibility of using the ICF model in physical therapy case reporting is supported by several examples in the peer reviewed literature (Helgeson and Smith, 2008;Rundell et al, 2009;Rundell and Davenport, 2010;Atkinson and Nixon-Cave, 2011;Furze et al, 2012), as well the existence of an ICF use case manual (Bickenbach et al, 2012).…”