This collection examines less frequently anaylzed aspects of employment for persons with disabilities, offering a variety of approaches to the conceptualization of work, and how it differs across cultures, organizations, and types of disability.

​This book addresses the developing field of Work Disability Prevention. Work disability does not only involve occupational disorders originating from the work or at the workplace, but addresses work absenteeism originating from any disorder or accident. This topic has become of primary importance due to the huge compensation costs and health issues involved. For employers it is a unique burden and in many countries compensation is not even linked to the cause of the disorder. In the past twenty years, studies have accumulated which emphasize the social causes of work disability. Governments and NGOs such as the World Bank, the International Labor Organization, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have produced alarming reports on the extent of this problem for developed and developing countries. However, no comprehensive book is presently available to help them address this emerging field where new knowledge should induce new ways of management.​

The most recent high-profile advocate for Americans with disabilities, actor Christopher Reeve, has highlighted for the public the economic and social costs of disability and the importance of rehabilitation. Enabling America is a major analysis of the field of rehabilitation science and engineering. The book explains how to achieve recognition for this evolving field of study, how to set priorities, and how to improve the organization and administration of the numerous federal research programs in this area. The committee introduces the "enabling-disability process" model, which enhances the concepts of disability and rehabilitation, and reviews what is known and what research priorities are emerging in the areas of: Pathology and impairment, including differences between children and adults. Functional limitationsâ€"in a person's ability to eat or walk, for example. Disability as the interaction between a person's pathologies, impairments, and functional limitations and the surrounding physical and social environments. This landmark volume will be of special interest to anyone involved in rehabilitation science and engineering: federal policymakers, rehabilitation practitioners and administrators, researchers, and advocates for persons with disabilities.

Sickness and disability is a key economic policy concern for many OECD countries. Medical conditions, or problems labelled as such by societies and policy systems, are proving an increasing obstacle to raising labour force participation and keeping ...

With several empirical evidences, this book advocates on the importance of human capital of persons with disabilities and demands the paradigm shift from charity into investment approach. Society in general believes that people with disabilities cannot benefit from education, cannot participate in the labour market and cannot be contributing members to families and countries. To invalidate such assumptions, this book describes how education in particular helps make persons with disabilities achieve economic independence and social inclusion. For the first time, detailed analyses of returns to the investment in education and nexus between disability, education, employability and occupational options are discussed. Moreover, other chapters describe disability and poverty followed by the discussion of barriers behind why persons with disabilities are unable to obtain education despite the significantly higher returns. These foundational themes recur throughout the book.

The World Report on Disability suggests more than a billion people totally experience disability. They generally have poorer health, lower education and fewer economic opportunities and higher rates of poverty than people without disabilities. This report provides the best available evidence about what works to overcome barriers to better care and services.

Occupational therapy is a health care specialty with a deep focus on client-centered and holistic rehabilitation to improve the individual's occupational performance, quality of life and well-being through participation in meaningful and purposeful activities. This new book presents the importance of the therapeutic and creative use of activity in different populations, which is one of the core components of occupational therapy. Rehabilitation, rehabilitation delivery and outcomes are affected by recent changes in the meaning of health and social values. This resulted in an increasing necessity for therapeutic therapy, as well as creative use of activity in occupational therapy. This book focuses on recent advances in occupational therapy and reviews current practical guidelines. It introduces updated knowledge and skills for children, adults and the communities, including physical, mental, social, sensory, behavioral, environmental and community-based interventions to prevent, promote and improve activity use. The book will be relevant to occupational therapists, speech and language therapists, physical therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and all the members of interdisciplinary rehabilitation team care workers.