NCHS International Statistics Programs
The Washington Group on Disability Statistics

NCHS Fact Sheet, December 2016

PDF Version (978 KB)

 

About NCHS

The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) is the nation’s principal health statistics agency, providing data to identify and address health issues. NCHS compiles statistical information to help guide public health and health policy decisions.

Collaborating with other public and private health partners, NCHS employs a variety of data collection mechanisms to obtain accurate information from multiple sources. This process provides a broad perspective to help us understand the population’s health, influences on health, and health outcomes.

 

International Activities at NCHS

NCHS collaborates with countries around the world and participates in a wide range of international initiatives. These programs consist of cooperative ventures on analytical and methodological issues, technical assistance, consultation, training, information exchange, and liaison with multinational agencies. Additionally, NCHS sponsors and hosts international meetings and symposia in order to foster the sharing of scientific information. Through these efforts, NCHS seeks to improve the availability and advance the quality and comparability of health data in the United States and other countries.

There are three fact sheets for the International Statistics Program. In addition to the WHO Collaborating Center on Disease Classification, there are fact sheets on Collaborations with International Organizations and Bilateral and Multilateral Collaborations available on the NCHS website.

 

United Nations Statistical Commission

The Washington Group on Disability Statistics (WG) was created by the United Nations Statistical Commission.

NCHS hosted the first meeting in 2002, and it serves as the secretariat for the group. NCHS has chaired the steering committee since its launch. The WG is a cooperative effort among national statistical offices of developed and developing countries, international statistical organizations, and international organizations representing persons with disabilities. The group works to develop internationally comparable disability measures for censuses and national surveys.

Other goals include improving the collection and interpretation of information on disability, enhancing comparability with other national and international data collections, and providing the detailed information necessary to fully understand the complexities of disability. The WG has developed a short set of questions for use on censuses and surveys to monitor progress in meeting the goals of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and to disaggregate outcome measures (employment and education) by disability status for monitoring the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals. The WG has also developed an extended set of functioning questions across a broader range of domains that can be used as survey modules or as the core of a targeted disability survey.

There has been growing interest in the work of the WG among international nongovernmental organizations and development agencies. The WG has provided training and support to technical advisors at Handicap International on the measurement of disability and the implementation of WG questions into their projects and programs.

Similarly, the United Kingdom Department for International Development and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) have promoted the use of the WG short set of questions to monitor the inclusion of persons with disabilities in their programs. Additionally, DFAT has provided financial support to WG to conduct regional workshops and provide technical assistance and capacity building. These activities will lead to the standardization of disability measurement in routine data collections globally.

 

United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)

In collaboration with the WG, UNICEF recognized the need for a module to produce internationally comparable data on child functioning and disability. In response, UNICEF and WG developed and tested a module for children aged 2–17 years with questions in the following domains: seeing, hearing, walking, self-care, communication or comprehension, learning, emotions, behavior, attention, coping with change, relationships, and playing.

Additionally, UNICEF and WG have begun work on the development of a survey module that will focus on environmental factors and the measurement of facilitators and barriers to school participation (inclusive education). The domains identified for further development include attitudes, getting to school, accessibility within the school, and affordability—with an additional sub-section on reasons a child may be out of school. Cognitive testing in the U.S. and at several international sites, will be conducted in 2016 under the guidance of the Question Design Research Lab (QDRL) at NCHS, with field testing to follow.

 

International Labor Organization (ILO)

The WG is collaborating with the ILO on the development of a disability module for use in Labor Force Surveys. A draft survey module will be cognitively tested at the QDRL at NCHS in 2016.

For further information about NCHS and its programs, visit https://www.cdc.gov/nchs.htm.

For further information on the International Statistics Program, visit https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/isp.htm.