In recent decades, there has been a push to incorporate the World Health Organization “Health for All” principles in
national, regional, and local health policy documents. However, there is still no methodology guiding the appraisal of such
policies with regard to the extent that they address social inclusion. In this article, the authors report on the development
of EquiFrame, a novel policy analysis framework that was used to evaluate the disability and rehabilitation policies of
Malawi, Namibia, Sudan, and South Africa. The policies were assessed in terms of their commitment to 21 predefined core
concepts of human rights and inclusion of 12 vulnerable groups. Substantial variability was identified in the degree to which
the core concepts and vulnerable groups were featured in these policy documents. The overall summary rankings for the
disability policies of the countries studied were as follows: Namibia–High, Malawi–Low, and Sudan–Low. The rehabilitation
policy of South Africa was ranked as Low. The results support the idea that adequate disability and rehabilitation policies
remain mostly undefined. EquiFrame may offer a useful methodology for evaluating and comparing human rights and social
inclusion across policy documents.
Keywords
human rights, vulnerable groups, health policy analysis, equity