The White Book on Disability in Italy: an ICF-based Italian survey.
OBJECTIVE
To describe the functioning and disability profiles of Italian person with disability (PwD) getting invalidity pension.


METHODS
Adult subjects were selected within the registries of local health agencies that provide invalidity certificates. The International Classification of Functioning Disability and Health (ICF) checklist was administered by trained interviewers. Count-based indexes were calculated for each ICF chapter and domain. Descriptive analysis and paired-sample t-test for evaluating differences between capacity and performance indexes in Activities and Participation (A&P) were employed.


RESULTS
A total of 742 persons were enrolled. Mean age among children and youth (N = 106) was 8.6 years, and among adults (N = 636) was 47.6 years. Most common health conditions are neurological diseases (30.2%), tumors (18.1%) and mental disorders (13.5%). Body Functions and Structures impairments are consistent with sample compositions. In A&P, capacity indexes are higher than performance ones, and facilitators are essentially reported among Environmental Factors (EF).


CONCLUSIONS
ICF-based tools are adequate to capture difficulties in different A&P areas, and to estimate EF's effect. In our study, the widest difficulties and the widest impact of EF are reported in areas describing activities of daily living, while areas describing communication, employment and leisure time activities are less problematic but, at the same time, less influenced by EF.
Leonardi
Matilde
M
Neurology, Public Health and Disability Unit - Scientific Directorate, Neurological Institute C. Besta IRCCS Foundation, Milan, Italy. leonardi@istituto-besta.it
Meucci
Paolo
P
Albanesi
Francesca
F
Invernizzi
Veronica
V
Raggi
Alberto
A
Lembo
Rosalba
R
Franco
Maria Grazia
MG
Genetti
Bruno
B
D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D004185:Disability Evaluation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D007558:Italy / Q000453:epidemiology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012042:Registries; D018582:Sick Leave / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D018875:Vocabulary, Controlled; D014942:Workers' Compensation / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D055815:Young Adult