About this Research Topic

Background

To align primary health care or rehabilitation services with people's needs and capabilities, it is critical that users can describe and communicate their needs and capabilities to social and medical services. There is global agreement on the need to harmonize terminologies and scales for a common description of human
functioning. The use of a common language can help improve communication about people's functioning and needs in health care and moreover, better inform health policy about the needs of the population.

Since the adoption of the World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) in 2001, numerous efforts have been undertaken at national and international levels to communicate and share knowledge about the ICF, it's inherent understanding of functioning and disability, the goals and benefits of the ICF and its potential fields of implementation. Continuous education and training in the ICF - in different settings and with a focus on different target groups or areas of activity - is the
essential prerequisite for the ongoing dissemination and use of the classification as a global standard to inform and report on functioning, disability and health.

The ICF Education Portal, hosted by the WHO-FIC Collaborating Centre in South Africa under the auspices of the Functioning and Disability Reference Group (FDRG) and the Education and Implementation Committee (EIC), as well as WHO’s ICF eLearning Tool, provide valuable resources for high-quality learning and teaching materials in different languages in the meanwhile.

This Research Topic “ICF in Teaching - Training - Education -Retrospective For Future Concepts - What Remains Of 20 Years Of ICF In Education?” offers the opportunity to share experiences of ICF in teaching, training, and education in different settings and from various perspectives as in academia, the practical field, user-groups
and or specific needs in health care. We welcome contributions on the experiences and lessons learned from 20 years of ICF in education, a look into the future can be taken - how to teach ICF best?

- ICF as a common language and bridge between the different professions and settings - what has been achieved and how can this succeed in the future?

- What concepts, modules, and formats for ICF teaching have been developed?

- What best practice models are established in between, but also feel invited in sharing worst-case experiences to learn from it?

- What tools are available for transferring knowledge about ICF and how are they used or evaluated?

We invite contributors from different fields to report on their work, experiences and research regarding ICF in teaching, training, and education. To support a wide range of types of contributions, we accept the following types of publications: Field Reports, Case Reports, Case Studies, Brief Research Report, Qualitative
Studies, Study Protocols, Review Papers (such as Rapid Reviews and Scoping Reviews), Commentaries as well as Opinions and Perspectives. We hope that also contributors from the D-A-CH countries will feel addressed. We would like to bundle these contributions.

Keywords: New Insights, New Developments, Human Functioning, Rehabilitation, #CollectionSeries

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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