To Special Olympics, Inclusive Health
It also means that people with IDD are empowered to take an active role in deciding their health and life choices. This helps people with IDD to be as healthy as they can be.
To make inclusive health a reality we must address unfair health differences that exist. This involves making sure that people with IDD have easier access to health services that are adapted to meet their needs.
Why Inclusive Health?
People with any developmental disability represent up to 16.65% of the US population, with people with intellectual and developmental disability (IDD) representing about 1%.1 Due to stigma and a long history of institutionalization, many Americans have never met a person with IDD. This includes many health care providers, public health officials, and policymakers.
People with IDD face a range of systemic challenges, including inadequate provider training and inaccessible facilities, and they have less access to quality health care and health promotion programs. As a result, people with IDD experience dramatically higher rates of preventable disease, chronic pain and suffering, and premature death than the general population.2 These health disparities are not due to the person’s disability, rather to inaccessible health promotion and disease prevention services as well: everything from fitness and physical activity services to health education delivery is rarely adapted to their needs.
A History of the Exclusion of People with IDD
Historically, society has had low expectations of people with IDD, viewing them as incapable of engaging in community life. People with IDD were frequently institutionalized or kept out of their communities. As the result of abuse, neglect, and social segregation, many did not live past the age of 20.
The Disability Rights Movement emerged during the 20th century and focused on the elimination of institutional, physical, and societal/attitudinal barriers experienced by people with disabilities. One area the movement focused on was improving the living circumstances of people with IDD by advocating for closing of institutions and supporting the integration of people with IDD in their own communities.3
As a result, people with IDD are now living longer than they ever have. However, people with intellectual disabilities die an average of 20 years earlier and continue to face barriers to health as the public health and health care systems have been slow to keep pace with the social changes.4 People with IDD remain one of the most medically underserved groups in the world and still face significant health disparities, not directly caused by their disability.
Working Toward Inclusive Health
Individuals and organizations across the health ecosystem can take action to remove barriers and improve access for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to their services, as their patients, constituents, and clients.