Measuring health among people with disabilities.

The evolution in our understanding of health has profound implications for people with disabilities. The purpose of this article is to explore how health has been defined and measured for people with disabilities. This article concludes with recommendations to improve measurement of health among people with disabilities. These recommendations include clarifying conceptual and operational definitions of health with input from people with disabilities, exploring whether existing health measures might be modified to encompass environmental supports for staying healthy and avoiding secondary conditions, and conducting population-based studies of health status of people with disabilities.