Public Health, Work, and Disability

Abstract

People with disabilities experience vast employment inequities. People with disabilities are at heightened risk of both unemployment and underemployment. Economic stability is one of the five social determinants of health domains. Given its pivotal role in both accessing wages and health insurance benefits, employment is directly tied to economic stability. As such, the working status of people with physical and mental disabilities is of concern to public health. In this chapter, we examine the role public health professionals can play in employment and workforce development. We first introduce the connections between disability and work, provide a brief history of societal changes in employment expectations, address the various systems that can be involved in achieving successful employment, and consider work from a universal design perspective.