In 2025, NACCHO’s Health and Disability program staff conducted a desk review and seven key informant interviews to understand existing efforts to integrate the health of people with disabilities into the public health workforce. Findings focused on identifying policy, systems, and environmental strategies to increase workforce capacity and embed including people with disabilities as a core public health practice. NACCHO has created recommendations for local health departments and partner organizations to embed disability expertise into public health systems to support the health of people with disabilities.

Recommendations include:

1. Build disability competencies into public health and healthcare education programs
   To prepare the public health workforce, disability awareness and including people with disabilities should be embedded as a core topic in the education and training of emerging public health professionals. The Including People with Disabilities: Public Health Workforce Competencies offers practical guidance for integrating disability into assessments and policy, aligning with accreditation standards led by organizations like the Council on Education for Public Health.
    
2. Require disability training to local health department workforce
   Requiring disability and health training for all local public health staff is a first step to educating the workforce on prioritizing people with disabilities in public health activities. These training courses should be co-developed with disability-led organizations and people with lived experience, covering topics such as disability terminology and history and accessible service design with real-world examples. NACCHO’s Health and Disability 101 in NACCHO University introduces disability awareness and can serve as a starting point to build staff capacity.
    
3. Integrate disability into accreditation, strategic planning, and workforce standards
   To create sustained change, local health departments should embed disability topics into accreditation, strategic planning, and workforce standards. Public health staff can incorporate disability-related indicators into Community Health Assessments (CHAs) and Community Health Improvement Plans (CHIPs), which shape how local health and partners prioritize community health improvement strategies.
    
4. Standardize and Utilize Disability Data Collection across Public Health Systems
   Local health departments should use standardized disability data to understand their whole community needs, improve service delivery and ensure people with disabilities are accurately represented. Using standardized tools like the American Community Survey (ACS) six question set offers a practical approach to collect disability data. 
    
5. Center People with Disabilities and Disability Organizations as Partners
   Local health departments should prioritize partnerships with disability-led and disability-serving organizations to inform public health initiatives with lived experience. Rather than building internal expertise from scratch, LHDs can leverage the existing knowledge of organizations such as Centers for Independent Living (CILs), University Centers for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities (UCEDDs), Special Olympics, and the National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities. These organizations have local chapters that serve communities across the nation.
    
6. Foster a Cultural Shift toward Including Disability in Public Health Practice
   It is necessary to build a public health culture rooted in the social model of disability—one that addresses accessibility barriers and systemic participation gaps rather than viewing disability solely as a condition to be treated or minimized.
    
7. Develop an accessible public health environment 
   Building an accessible public health environment requires more than ADA compliance—it takes intentional changes in communication, staffing, infrastructure, and leadership. It is essential to ensure that health messaging and access to services are understandable and designed for all. This includes using plain language, universal design, and disability-informed messaging across all communications.

For more resources on these recommendations, view the full report.