Disability, health care, and public policy

Efforts to persuade policymakers to rely on data to plan health care servic es for people with a disability or a chronic illness must confront the fact that many competing definitions of disability are currently used. it is im portant to recognize that pressures for standardization as well as disputes over disability definitions take place in a broader social and political c ontext. Despite the practical difficulties facing researchers and the highl y charged atmosphere in which disagreements over definitions must be manage d, researchers have made progress in developing policy-relevant data that u nderline the importance of the health needs of people with a disability.