The
Washington Group on Disability Statistics was
formed as a result of the United Nations International Seminar on
Measurementof Disability that took place
in New York in June 2001. An outcome of that meeting was the recognition
that statistical and methodological work was needed at an international
level in order to facilitate the comparison of data on disability
cross-nationally. Consequently, the United Nations Statistical Division
authorized the formation of a City Group to address some of the issues
identified in the International Seminar and invited the National Center
for Health Statistics, the official health statistics agency of the United
States, to host the first meeting of the group. The City
Group format is one that has been used by the United Nations (U.N.) in numerous
other occasions to address various problems in survey measurement and
methodology, such as the Rio Group, which focuses on poverty statistics.
The City Group is an informal, temporary organizational format that allows
representatives from national statistical agencies to come together to
address selected problems in statistical methods. A City Group usually
develops a series of three to four working meetings and is named after the location
of the first meeting. Click
here to view other City Group Web sites.