World Health Organization Standardizes Children's Health Status
New Code to Give Context for Doctors and Policy Makers
The ICF-CY is a response to a lack of identification of important factors in children's health as compared to adults. This is due to the fact that so much crucial development happens in the early childhood years. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health has been used for used to properly contextualize adult health around the world since 2001, but did not take into account the special needs and conditions of children.
Ros Madden, Chair of the WHO's Functioning and Disability Reference Group of the Family of International Classifications Network said in a WHO press release, "The ICF-CY will help us get past simple diagnostic labels. It will ground the picture of children and youth functioning and disability on a continuum within the context of their everyday life and activities. In this way it enables the accurate and constructive description of children's health and identifies the areas where care, assistance and policy change are most needed."
The ICF-CY covers such considerations as chronic hunger, thirst and home-life instability in addition to developmental delay, as in the case of malnutrition. It is imperative for a child to reach milestones, such as height and weight levels at a certain age, in order to access whether that child will be at risk for disabilities and other health problems later in life. Having more precise classification measures will allow physicians, researchers, administrators, policy makers, and parents determine a more detailed view of children's health and conditions, in order to plan for health care or other needs.
The new classification for children's health takes into account body functions as well as body structures and their formation. The ICF-CY also looks at domestic life, aptitudes in education and communication, in addition to interpersonal relationships and interactions. Environmental factors that are included in the classification system include the natural environment and man-made changes to that environment, and services available to the child.
The ICF-CY will not only provide a framework for assessing the health of children in the danger zones of Africa and other areas where children suffer malnutrition and other maladies, but the classification system will be of great importance in developed countries, such as the US.
Source: World Health Organization
Published by alex cruden
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