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- Read the latest newsletter
Dear friends,
We are delighted that Benafsha Yaqoobi has passed her Ph.D. viva, pending minor corrections. Benafsha’s research explores barriers and facilitators to accessing education amongst youth with disabilities in Afghanistan, drawing on a policy analysis and qualitative research with youth and key informants. Benafsha was supervised by Tom Shakespeare and Mark Carew. She is already widely recognised for her work in human rights, and was recognised as one of the 100 Women by the BBC in 2021. Congratulations Benafsha!
Refugees continue to be in the news, and also in our research. Last month, Sarah Polack and Jane Wilbur held an online workshop together with the International Rescue Committee UK, bringing together refugee sector and disability organisations. Participants discussed emerging findings and key priorities from joint research exploring the experiences of disabled refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. A second workshop with disabled refugees and asylum seekers is planned, and insights shared will help inform the development of a framework to strengthen inclusion.
Tragic news out this month through the LeDeR Report shows that people with learning disabilities still face very high levels of avoidable mortality. Data from England shows that more than half of adults with learning disabilities die before the age of 65 – on average 19 years earlier than others in the population. This large inequity remains the inspiration for the forthcoming Lancet Commission on Disability and Health – and we are still working to generate data on the extent of the gaps and what we should do about them. Watch this space!
We are still accepting abstracts for the conference. If you are interested in sharing evidence on what works for disability inclusion globally and presenting at the conference, please submit your abstracts using the form linked below. Abstract submission will close on 31 August and we will be in touch with the successful applicants soon after.
Visit our website to learn about the conference, including how to submit an abstract, conference format, key dates and more.With best wishes,
Hannah Kuper and Tom Shakespeare
International Centre for Evidence in Disability, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
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Save the dates for our 2026 monthly webinars
- 24 January 2026 - Disability, Conflict and Education
- 24 February 2026 - PENDA InBusiness: Evidence from a livelihood support programme for persons with disabilities in Kenya
- 24 March 2026 -Strengthening Menstrual Health for Women and Girls with Disabilities: Evidence and Innovation
- 28 April 2026 - "Tusobola: We Can" A film on the Missing Billion Participatory Learning and Action for Disability project in Uganda
- 26 May 2026 - Co-producing community-based mental health support in Africa
- 7 July 2026 - Disability Inclusive Graduation: A livelihood support intervention in Bangladesh
- 25 August 2026 - Preventing school violence among children with disabilities in Tanzania
- 8 September 2026 - Evidence from inclusive social protection programmes in Laos and Sierra Leone
- 29 September 2026 - Findings from the FAIR framework project for inclusive humanitarian action
- 6 October 2026 - IFPLAN: Insights from a disability inclusive family planning project in Nigeria
- 27 October 2026 - PDC/Baby Ubuntu: early care and support for children at risk of developmental disabilities and their caregivers in Rwanda
- 19 November 2026 - PLA-D: A community-led approach for disability inclusion in health in Uganda
More information on individual webinars, including details on how to join, will be shared closer to their respective dates.
Disability Inclusion Webinar
Join us for our Disability Inclusion Webinar!
Title: Shaping Inclusive Research - Experiences from the Disability Knowledge and Research Centre in East Africa.
Date: Tuesday 1st September
Time: 10.00am – 12.00pm East African time
Joining link: MS Teams
Teams Meeting ID: 320 232 704 155 959 / Passcode: AC3Un3MJ
This webinar will showcase the Disability Knowledge and Research Centre East Africa's work in advancing inclusive disability research. Speakers will highlight capacity building, participatory research approaches, and strategies to make health research disability inclusive, concluding with a discussion on collaboration and future priorities for strengthening disability research across Africa and beyond.
NIHR Community engagement and involvement (CET) Podcast
The fourth episode of the NIHR community engagement and involvement podcast series 'Leaving no one behind' featured Dr Andrew Sentoogo Ssemata, Research Fellow at MRC/UVRI & LSHTM Uganda Research Unit.
Disability Inclusive Education and Employment
This film presents findings from a research project on Disability-Inclusion in Education and Employment in seven countries in Africa (Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal and Uganda). The film was created with young people with disabilities from Uganda and Ghana who participated in the study.
The research was conducted in partnership with ICED, Mastercard Foundation, the University of Abuja, the University of Ghana, Lifetime Consulting Ltd, Addis Ababa University, University of Nairobi, Global Advocacy and Research Group and MRC/UVRI & LSHTM Uganda Research Group. It was funded by the Mastercard Foundation.
Phase 1 study reports on the policy landscape are available here.
Watch a film about the research findings, created with young people with disabilities who participated in the study here.
COVID-19 Support and Guidance
The situation with COVID-19 is rapidly changing. We have gathered a list of resources about COVID-19 to share with caregivers, children & young people and education, health and social care practitioners to navigate the dynamic situation of the COVID-19 response, and the many impacts that it will have. We hope that they are helpful and we will continue to add new resources as they become available.
- Information on how parent groups have been run post ‘lock-down’ in Rwanda
- Guidelines on what to consider to run groups safely in the context of COVID-19
- A range of free digital COVID-19 educational resources for children: download Axel Scheffler’s book, download a copy of Lydia Monk’s book
- Share your story and contribute to voices of people with disabilities during the COVID-19 outbreak: voices
- LSHTM’s free online course for anyone who is interested to learn about what we know about COVID-19, and how we should respond to the outbreak
- A course that introduces COVID-19, created for teenagers and young adults
- Presentation from the International Centre for Evidence in Disability: making the response disability-inclusive
- Paper on what we can learn from a disability inclusive response
- Working with parent groups – a training resource for facilitators and caregivers
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These manuals (Getting to Know Cerebral Palsy, Juntos and ABAANA EIP) aim to increase knowledge and skills in caring for a child with developmental disabilities. Research highlighted the significant needs of the caregivers, and how they can gain a huge amount of support from meeting with each other in an understanding environment.
It promotes a participatory learning approach with an emphasis on working with groups and the empowerment of parents and caregivers.
Download the manual (in various languages)
“Before, my family and people in my community used to say ‘this child’s suffering is a result of parent’s sin’. After taking the training I have explained what causes cerebral palsy to others. Now, no-one says anything like this.”
Parent, Sirajganj, Bangladesh
Animated videos on child development and developmental disability
Download and use these animated videos from ICED on child developmental and developmental disability, with versions in English, Portuguese and Spanish. The first of these videos provides information on child development across different domains and considers how this process can be disrupted for some children. The second explores the challenges and barriers in the lives of people with a developmental disability, and how support strategies can help an individual better participate in their community.
Please use these videos in your own teaching, support groups or in any other forum, appropriately acknowledging the International Centre for Evidence in Disability at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
The videos are available in English, Portuguese (Brazil) and Spanish.
View the English videos below:
View the English videos with subtitles here:
- Child development video with English subtitles
- Developmental disability video with English subtitles
View the Portuguese (Brazil) videos with subtitles here:
- Child development video with Portuguese (Brazil) subtitles
- Developmental disability video with Portuguese (Brazil) subtitles
View the Spanish videos with subtitles here:
Supporting Families Affected by Zika virus
Children with developmental disabilities and their families
Join a global community to share ideas, access the latest research, find solutions, meet new people and collaborate on innovative and exciting projects.
Community Ear and Hearing Health Journal
This annual publication promotes good ear and hearing health in low and middle-income countries.
It's a forum for exchanging ideas, experience and information that facilitate continuing education for all levels of health worker. It is delivered to almost 4,000 healthcare providers worldwide. Some issues have been translated into French and Spanish.
- Read previous issues
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- Issue No. 21 (2020) Ear and hearing care in the midst of a pandemic
- Issue No. 20 (2019) Noise-induced hearing loss
- Issue No. 19 (2018) Hearing aid systems in low-resource settings
- Issue No. 18 (2017) Focus: Ear and Hearing Health in Schools
- Issue No. 17 (2016) Common ear conditions underdiagnosed at primary level
- Version Française No. 3 (2021) Soins de l’oreille et de l’audition en temps de pandémie
- Version en Español No. 2 (2021) Cuidado del oído y la audición en media de una pandemia
- Version française No. 2 (2016) Sensibiliser la communauté à la santé de l’oreille et de l’audition
- Version en Español No. 1 (2016) Abordando los problemas de oído
- Version française No. 1 (2015) Lutter contre les affections de l’oreill et de l’audition au niveau primaire
- Issue No. 16 (2015) Testing small children’s hearing with little or no equipment
- Issue No. 15 (2014) Early detection of hearing loss in newborn and preschool children
- Issue No. 14 (2014) Living with hearing impairment
- Issue No. 13 (2013) Increasing community awareness of ear and hearing health
- Issue No. 12 (2012) Addressing ear and hearing problems at primary level
- Issue No. 11 (2011) Projects in the Philippines
- Issue No.10 (2010) Less noisy cities Issue No. 9 (2009) Noise: an ubiquitous pollutant
- Issue No.8 (2008) Tinnitus: a common and manageable complaint
- Issue No.7 (2008) Screening for hearing impairment
- Issue No.6 (2007) Chronic suppurative otitis media: a disease still waiting for solutions
- Issue No.5 (2007) Rehabilitation of the deaf and hard of hearing
- Issue No.4 (2006) Deafness caused by ototoxicity in developing countries
- Issue No.3 (2006) Congenital infections and hearing impairment
- Issue No.2 (2005) Current practice for ear syringing
- Issue No.1 (2004) Congenital deafness in developing countries
Press articles
Read articles on ICED activity in the international press and on SciDev.net. Use disability resources from across the web.
- Read press articles on our work
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- Disability in the Global South Journal focusing on Disability and the SDGs, edited by Hannah Kuper and Shaun Grech. July 2017
- National Survey of Disability in Guatemala 2016 – Case Study, International Institute for Sustainable Development, June 2017
- Hannah Kuper discusses the exclusion of children with disabilities from education around the world – Al Jazeera News Hour (live), 18 August 2015
- Many disabled children in poorer countries left out of primary education – The Guardian, 18 August, 2015
SciDev.net columns
- February 2016: ‘Zika babies’ need support now
- January 2016: Kids at risk from El Niño
- December 2015: Monitor birth defects to save lives
- November 2015: Rethink healthcare for the ageing world
- October 2015: Defend girls’ sexual health rights
- September 2015: Reshape mental healthcare in crises
- August 2015: Give SDG monitoring some bite
- July 2015: Community care cuts NTD burden
- June 2015: Better data on disaster victims
- May 2015: A better way to find disabled kids
- April 2015: The next hurdle for Ebola survivors
- March 2015: Universal Health Coverage: Bearing the Brunt of Violence
- February 2015: Reaching Patients with Smartphones
- January 2015: Universal Health Care can happen
- December 2014: HIV and Disability November 2014: Ageing and Disability
Global Health and Disability
All files and contents in this folder are © LSHTM unless otherwise stated. You are welcome to reuse, adapt and share these files for non-commercial teaching and learning purposes without asking for permission. You must acknowledge the International Centre for Evidence in Disability, LSHTM as the original creator and provide a link to our website. We would also very much appreciate hearing how you are using the content - please let us know at [email protected].
- Download full course
- Download content from each week
- Week 1: Disability and its importance to the global development agenda
ZIP (522MB)|ZIP (no videos) (9MB) - Week 2: Health, wellbeing and disability
ZIP (807MB)|ZIP (no videos) (19MB) - Week 3: Access to health care and rehabilitation services
ZIP (904MB)|ZIP (no videos) (154MB)
- Week 1: Disability and its importance to the global development agenda
- Download individual resources
Video: Welcome to the course
Week 1: Disability and its importance to the global development agenda
Video: Welcome to week 1
Video & teaching slides: Why does disability matter globally?
- Video (MP4 74.9MB)
- Step text and transcript (PDF 80KB)
- Teaching slides (PDF 954KB)
- References (PDF 88KB)
Video: Why does disability matter – Personal perspectives
Article: Why does disability matter – individual case studies
Article: Why does disability matter to International Development? Part 1
Article: Nothing about us without us
- Article (PDF 122KB)
- References (PDF 188KB)
- Disability and the SDGs – How relevant is each SDG to disability? (PDF 632KB)
Video: What does disability mean – personal perspectives
Video: Attitudes to disability
Video: What does disability mean – a framework
Article: Measuring disability: Why would you want to and how do you do it?
Video: What is the relationship between impairments and disability?
Video: what are the common impairments related to disability?
Article: Why does impairment matter?
Video: Summary of week 1
Video: Welcome to week 2
Public Health Planning for Hearing Impairment (PHPHI) short course
This 5-day international short course aimed to familiarise participants with the concepts and principles of public health approaches to ear and hearing care, with emphasis on planning and implementing programmes in low- and middle-income countries. From 2009 to end of 2021, 1701 health workers from 59 countries have been taught in 59 courses in 15 centres. 10 of these centres are in low- and middle-income countries.

- More about PHPHI
In 2020, all the current courses were converted to completely on-line or hybrid courses.
Short report on the Public Health Planning for Hearing Impairment (PHPHI) on-line courses in 2020.
Contact: For more information about PHPHI short courses please contact Joanna Jeremy
