The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health: Contemporary Literature Overview.

Abstract

This article reviews the literature from the 3 years since the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health's (ICF's) endorsement, focusing on those articles that discuss (a) what the ICF means and how it can be used; (b) the general utility of the ICF for specific fields, such as nursing, occupational therapy, speech-language pathology, and audiology; (c) examples of applications for classification in particular disorders, such as chronic health conditions, neuromusculoskeletal conditions, cognitive disorders, mental disorders, sensory disorders, and primary and secondary conditions in children; (d) uses of the ICF to recode prior work across multiple surveys and across country coding schemes on disability-related national survey items; and (e) governmental uses of the ICF in the United States and selected countries abroad.Future directions needed to effectively implement the ICF across rehabilitation policy, research, and practice are discussed.This article reviews the literature in psychology and health and human services, and rehabilitation more generally, from the 3 years since the endorsement of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF).For this review, we narrowed our searches to articles focused on clinical research or specific implementations of the Bruyère , VanLooy, & Peterson The ICF: Contemporary Literature Overview