Health Disparities of People with IDD

The National Institutes for Health (NIH) recently designated people with disabilities as a population with health disparities.1 The designation formally recognizes what the disability community has long known: that people with disabilities experience poorer health outcomes compared to the general population.

People with disabilities live with significant unmet health needs and health disparities compared to the general population. People with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) are more than twice as likely to die prematurely than the general population, and have significantly higher rates of mental illness, obesity, and other health conditions.2 3 These disparities are not due to the person’s disability, rather to inaccessible health promotion and disease prevention services: everything from fitness and physical activity services to health education delivery is rarely adapted to their needs.

Health disparities, sometimes called health inequities, are preventable or avoidable differences in health outcome between different groups of people. Typically, these differences are experienced by vulnerable populations due to poor access to and quality of health care. Due to a range of systemic challenges, including inadequate provider training, and inaccessible facilities, people with IDD have less access to quality health care and health promotion programs. As a result, people with IDD experience dramatically higher rates of preventable health issues than peers without IDD.

Health Disparities

2X

People with IDD are twice as likely to die prematurely1

14%

Adults with IDD have obesity at a 14% higher rate2

3 in 5

As many as 3 in 5 people with IDD may have a co-occurring mental health condition3
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What Causes These Disparities?
People with IDD are capable of being healthy, but typically experience significant barriers to achieving equitable health. Here are some of the barriers that cause health disparities for people with IDD.

Attitudinal Barriers

Attitudinal barriers, including stigma, stereotypes, and misconceptions related to having a disability. For example, public health departments may not include people with IDD in their health promotion efforts based on their implicit bias that people with IDD cannot improve their health.

Communication Barriers

Communication barriers include ways in which communications are not accessible such as use of complicated or technical language, long sentences, text-heavy dense forms, and words with many syllables.
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Policy Barriers

Policy barriers arise from lack of laws and regulations requiring access, or lack of enforcement of existing laws. Examples include health insurance reimbursement policies that assume all people can be served in a 15-minute visit.
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Programmatic Barriers

Programmatic barriers arise when organizations fail to make reasonable accommodations to their programs or operations. Examples include inflexible appointment scheduling, insufficient time for appointments, meetings, or classes.
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Social Barriers

Social barriers relate to the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, learn, work, and age – also known as social determinants of health. These barriers include lack of financial resources, unemployment, lack of stable housing, and the experience of abuse.
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Physical Barriers

Physical barriers include structural barriers that block mobility. People with IDD sometimes have physical disabilities as well, and are impacted by these barriers.