The NACC is one of the Collaborating Centers supporting the maintenance, updating, and revision activities associated with the World Health Organization's suite of international classifications.  These include the ICD for diagnostic classification, and the ICF for the classification of health that involves functional impairments, activity limitations, or participation restrictions.  The WHO has published the ICF internationally since 2001.

The NACC is a voluntary consortium of researchers, agencies, and interested individuals throughout North America.  The agency partners are the Canadian Institute for Health Information, Statistics Canada, and the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics.

Our Series of NACC ICF Conferences

Our Collaborating Center has sponsored many bi-national conferences related to the classification of disability during the past 15 years, generally alternating between Canadian and American venues.

The first conferences had been associated with the revision process for the International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities, and Handicaps (ICIDH), also published by WHO during the 1980s.  Some of our ICIDH and ICF conferences have been hosted by colleagues in academic rehabilitation medicine and physical therapy, for example at Washington University, the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, and at SUNY Buffalo.

Our Collaborating Center’s purpose in sponsoring this series of ICF Conferences has been to build capacity for utilizing the ICF, in appropriate settings and meaningful ways.

Generally, our format has featured contributed abstracts and oral presentations about current research in the U.S. and Canada involving either the ICF conceptual framework or ICF coding.

We try to incorporate a training module, pre-conference workshop, or “ICF primer” for newcomers to the ICF, or as a refresher for those familiar with the classification.  The training modules are designed generally to familiarize attendees with the basics of ICF coding.  Often we have featured Keynote Speakers and plenary sessions, in addition to concurrent sessions.  Our WHO and WHO-FIC colleagues have been able to join us for some of the ICF Conferences.  They add impetus to aligning our ICF-oriented activities and professional networks in North America with those of our colleagues around the world.

You can review many of the presentation documents from the most recent full-scale NACC ICF Conference, conducted in 2008 in Quebec City, at this website hosted by our colleagues at the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

http://www.cihiconferences.ca/icfconference/

Selected documents from the previous NACC ICF Conferences can be reviewed at the following CDC website:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/icd/nacc_meetings.htm