Research Impact: Under the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, data should be disaggregated by disability status. In other words, we are at liberty to report statistics with differences by disabilities, just in the same way that we do for gender, and age. However, the challenge with this is that not all statistical data collection information on disability status. In 2020, the WHO released the PA guidelines, and for the first time included people with disabilities into the guidelines. Shortly afterwards, there was the Lancet series on physical activity, and included a paper on disability status.
In addition, there have been human rights council reports on physical activity for people with disabilities. As such, it was the right time to launch a global matrix on the physical activity indicators, but specifically on data with disabilities. This paper is part of a forthcoming special issue on the Para Report Cards that is freely available to read, download and print in Adapted Physical Activity Quarterly. The special issue includes two overview papers, and 12 brief national reports, including one on Ireland. The work in Ireland was done in collaboration with the https://ActiveHealthykidsIreland.org team of researchers, including those at UL. It received large media attention when it was released late 2022, and now that paper has been published in APAQ, readers can see in more details about the way the results were presented.
Ng, K., Sit, C., Arbour-Nicitopoulos, K., Aubert, S., Stanish, H., Hutzler, Y., Silva, D.A.S., Kang, M.G., López-Gil, J.F., Lee, E.Y. and Asunta, P., 2023. Global Matrix of Para Report Cards on Physical Activity of Children and Adolescents With Disabilities. Adapted Physical Activity Quarterly, 1(aop), pp.1-22. https://doi.org/10.1123/apaq.2022-0111
Find Out More
The International Federation of Adapted Physical Activity will be hosting a special issue webinar on the 12th April 2023 between 12:15-13:45 BST. It is free to attend, and registration can be done through : https://bit.ly/APAQPRC
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