The Disability Tax: The Toll on the Human Rights of People with Illness, Injury, and Disability

This lecture in the Science and Human Rights series will highlight how the newly developed Disability Tax Model aligns with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and describe how the model is a tool to support the realization of the human rights outlined in the treaty.

The World Health Organization and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities recognize the importance of comparing across cultures and disabilities, particularly with consideration of access to human rights to identify patterns that may impact individual health trajectories and global health outcomes. There is a pressing need to learn from commonalities in positive and negative trends across and within disabilities to identify broad issues and overlooked solutions. This approach allows for better-tailored policy and practice that is supportive of the human rights of people with disabilities, and beneficial to all of society.

People with disabilities and chronic illnesses face hidden burdens and barriers, existing in addition to the challenges faced by their non-disabled peers, which can tax their inextricably linked social, material, health, and internal resources. The Disability Tax Model is a theoretical and operational model examining these impairment-related and socially-driven burdens and barriers to full participation and value in society that can even turn a mild or temporary condition into a permanent disability.

The Disability Tax Model provides a common means of understanding the relationship between impairments, society, and barriers to utilization of supportive resources in the context of illness, injury, and disability. It provides an index to situate the disability experience within individual and structural influences, allowing for comparisons across disabilities, cultures, and societies. This also allows for examination of the potential impact of supranational influences on health and disability trends (e.g., weather/natural disasters, corporate influence in food or medicine, regional instability due to war).

The model supports researchers, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and governments in assessing and address barriers, existing health disparities, social determinates of health/disability, while also identifying vulnerable populations and learning techniques and strategies from particularly resilient groups. The Disability Tax Model also functions as an educational and self-assessment tool for people with acute and chronic injuries, illness, and disabilities, and their families, to identify taxed resources to then be addressed through individual effort, support services, and advocacy.


Sarah Shick is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at Case Western Reserve University, specializing in medical sociology and disability, with focus on health disparities, social determinates of health, global health trends, and health measurement. She is trained as a certified nursing assistant through Lorain Community College, a B.A. in Women's Studies from Cleveland State University's Honors College, and an M.A. in Sociology from Case Western Reserve University. Sarah also has extensive experience in community outreach, medical education, women's health, disability assessment, health policy, and research. Sarah is a proud third generation female CWRU graduate; her mother earned a degree in early childhood education, and her grandmother earned a nursing degree.

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