Global Health Institute

Disability and health; associating the two together seems like an obvious correlation. The following words are often used interchangeably with disability in discussions about disability as a “health” problem: “impairment,” “handicap,” and “sick.” The biomedical model of disability, focusing on health purely, is the most dominant model of disability that is used to understand disability in the context of global health. 

I am able-bodied, and throughout most of my life, my perception of disability was primarily based on a determined dynamic between myself and my younger sister who was diagnosed with “cerebral palsy.” I was also accustomed to the aforementioned biomedical model of disability. I understood disability as an absolute, inferior condition and a pathology in need of treatment, rehabilitation, and mitigation. While there is no right or wrong model to understand or view disability, I learned over the course of many years that focusing on disability solely as resulting from an individual person’s physical or mental limitation results in individualizing the problem. Furthermore, this tends to reinforce systems in place that tend to perpetuate discriminatory practices against persons with disabilities in able-bodied spaces, including clinical and health care facilities as exemplary global sites.

So what? How can we rethink about global health with respect to disability? What can we do to promote inclusiveness in global health? 

Considering the relationship between disability and health is complex and complicated as disability is a cross-cutting issue that interacts with a wide range of issues such as sustainability, development, business, and education to name a few. Furthermore, persons with disabilities are a very heterogeneous group, including people with a wide range of disabilities, age, gender, race/migrant situation, and environments. 

Increasingly, the question is no longer if people with disabilities are included in global health efforts. The disability movement’s credo, “Nothing About Us Without Us,” has resulted in many initiatives, with well-intentioned statements and disability inclusive policies, in mainstream global health efforts. Beginning in the 1970s, the global disability rights movement led by persons with disabilities themselves, led to the landmark UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) adopted in 2006, and ratified by more than 170 countries today. In addition, persons with disabilities are mentioned 11 times in the Sustainable Development Goals in keeping with CRPD, implicitly adhering to the call to “leave no one behind” and explicitly that the goals and targets are related to disabilities.

However, much remains to be done. To achieve global health and beyond, we need to do more than just mainstreaming disability-related issues and including persons with disabilities in able-bodied spaces. We, as a diverse group of both disabled and able-bodied people, need to work together to promote measures to have representations of persons with disabilities in leadership positions and ensure that the global health landscape is also for and by persons with disabilities. 

Jinseul Jun (MAAS ’20) is a graduate in the Arab Studies program (MAAS) at Georgetown – School of Foreign Service, and a student fellow with the Global Health Initiative.