Advocacy deserves your financial and personal engagement. Nowhere can that be seen more clearly than in health care and long-term support services.
In Wednesday’s Boston Globe, Jessica Bartlett reports on a recent study of health care provided to those with disabilities: “The focus groups additionally revealed negative attitudes among some doctors toward people with disabilities, with some saying that providing care to such individuals was burdensome.”
Similar results were found in 2008, and in the years since, when The Arc collaborated with Boston University School of Social Work in a year-long study of the quality of care provided to persons with I/DD. The study, reported over 12 years ago by the Boston Globe and published in 2010 in an issue of Health and Social Work, found that “individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities face health care disparities and inequities in four areas: access, knowledge, communication, and quality.”
Back then, most studies focused on barriers for those with physical disabilities. Clearly, barriers continue not just for those with physical disabilities, but for those with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and autism, as well.
We need to make accelerated progress toward quality care – something that the pandemic has only made clearer.
Help The Arc get the resources it needs to keep up advocacy on multiple fronts, with health care being just one of them.
Thank you to @BostonGlobe for sharing these important findings and how @TheArcofMass is addressing training for soon to be doctors. #inclusivehealthcare #familiesteachingdoctors #operationhousecall #disabilityadvocacy #autismadvocacy https://t.co/9ox4Pqt7Ei
— Maura Sullivan (@MauraAtTheArcMa) October 6, 2022
