Healthy People Consortium Meeting
"Implementing Healthy People 2010"
November 11, 2000

Summary of Breakout Group Discussion Concerning:
Disability and Secondary Conditions

Challenges/Barriers to Meeting Healthy People 2010 Objectives

• Secondary disability can be understood in at least two ways: as a nearly universal experience for all who live to an advanced age, and as a marginalizing experience characteristic of a particular group of people throughout the lifespan.
• Data sources must be found for three developmental objectives if they are to survive in the chapter beyond the mid-decade review.
• CDC provides half the funds for one potential data source, the BRFSS, but to take full advantage of this potentiality, additional funding support is needed from communities of interest (i.e., organizations with an interest in disability).
• By its nature, the disability focus area runs the continuing risk that interest groups representing particular contributing conditions to the total disability picture (e.g., those for epilepsy and visual deficiencies) may become competitive in seeking attention and support, thus lessening the focus on the larger concept.
• Additional data are needed to demonstrate fully to potential employers and others that interventions on behalf of people with disabilities are cost effective.

Opportunities for Expanding Implementation/Partnerships

• Campus organizations are potential partners that have not been fully exploited.
• Complementarity and synergy might well result from disability forums at which multiple health professions had representatives present and engaged.
• Disability touches on a broader array of life's aspects (e.g., the environment) than do most focus areas, but sufficient consideration has not been given to finding ways to recruit natural allies in these spheres.
• A mechanism is needed for leveraging funds and other forms of support for the interests of disabled people from corporations that make money from this community through sales of assistive devices.
• In the business sector as a whole, employers can be shown, through currently available evidence, that absenteeism rates for those with disabilities can be lowered by reasonable modifications to working conditions, thus making it in their own interest to effect these changes.

Additional Recommendations and Observations

• As well as increased financial resources, passion and commitment are also necessary to improving the lives of people with disabilities.
• Make it more widely known to people with disabilities themselves that there is now a focus area in Healthy People devoted to their needs and interests.
• Enhance the Healthy People 2010 Web site so as to record the names and specialties of organizations adopting focus areas or particular objectives.
• Because people with disabilities appear as a special population breakout group in the template for over 100 objectives in other focus areas, proportionate attention should be given to achieving the targets of those objectives, along with targets of the 13 in the focus area.
• Provide additional resources for the training of people in professions concerned with maintaining the health and well-being and enhancing the capabilities of people with disabilities.
• Increase research on the needs of people with disabilities, the efficacy of interventions to help them, and the cost of partnering with organizations that share an interest in their welfare.
• Seek to increase the participation of people with disabilities in exercise programs geared to their needs and capacities, thereby reducing their need for special services in many cases.

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