The rehabilitation workforce plays a crucial role in providing the rehabilitation services needed by persons experiencing limitations in everyday physical, mental, and social functioning to reduce disability. Rehabilitation worker shortages, inequitable distribution, and issues of quality and relevance pose a major barrier to people accessing the care they need, when and where they need it. The rehabilitation personnel density at the population level informs the capacity of the health system to deliver rehabilitation to the population, allowing program planners to conduct rehabilitation need assessment, and allocate and prioritize resources for rehabilitation. 

This visualization presents data on rehabilitation personnel of six of the core rehabilitation professions: physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech and language therapists, rehabilitation doctors (also known as physiatrists), psychologists, and prosthetic and orthotic professionals. The visualization presented includes the profession density (overall and by profession) and the ratio of rehabilitation personnel per population in need of rehabilitation in countries of the Americas. These are by no means the only rehabilitation professions and future data collection will aim to expand to a wider range of professions including chiropractors, rehabilitation nurses and mid-level rehabilitation workers.