Secondary Disability Prevention: Involving Consumers in the Development of a Public Health Surveillance Instrument

Abstract

Recent legislation has directed the Centers for Disease Control of the Public Health Service to develop a program of disability prevention. Importantly, this new program focuses attention on preventing secondary disabilities—conditions that occur after an individual has acquired a primary (or first) disability. An important influence on the agenda of secondary disability prevention involves identifying the conditions that define the problem for intervention. In public health, this is often accomplished through surveillance systems. In this paper we describe the development of a consumer-directed secondary disability surveillance tool that is consistent with consumer control tenets of independent living philosophy.