Deriving developmental code sets from the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, for Children and Youth (ICF-CY)

Classifying childhood disability is a persistent challenge in health and education settings. Differences exist in the method and instruments used to identify and document childhood disability across settings, countries, and by professional discipline. This variability compromises reliable prevalence rates, limits valid comparisons of consequences of diagnosed conditions, and reduces knowledge about functional outcomes. Particularly challenging to establishing a standard classification system has been the lack of a universal definition and shared conceptualization of childhood disability.;These limitations were addressed with the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health for Children and Youth (ICF-CY). The ICF-CY was endorsed by the WHO in 2007 and represents the first universal classification system available to document child health and disability. It also provides a common language and shared conceptualization of child disability across disciplines and countries and was designed to record the characteristics of developing children for multiple purposes, such as use in program planning, surveillance, research, and documentation of intervention outcomes (WHO, 2007).;Application of the ICF-CY is important to unify data on child health status, but the complexity and time required to use it limits its feasibility. This study was conducted to enhance the utility of the ICF-CY by asking international experts to identify essential categories of children's functioning during different developmental periods. The Delphi iv technique was used as a formal consensus process to derive four code sets for children (a) birth to three years of age, (b) three through five years, (c) six through twelve years, and (d) twelve through seventeen years. A professionally diverse sample of 151 international experts representing all major world regions completed a series of iterative online surveys to rate the most important categories of child functioning to include in brief universal age-based "ICF-CY Developmental Code Sets". The final code sets are intended to serve as a universal reference for minimal information to collect about child functioning in research, clinical practice, and policy for application in a global multidisciplinary context.