Optimal Health

Health Equity – achieving optimal health

Increased personal control and accessible health-promoting services and resources transform the individual with a disability and the community.

Challenges:

1. People with disabilities have dramatically worse health outcomes than their nondisabled peers.

• • In Kentucky, where Gathering Strength is located, people with disabilities are three times more likely than nondisabled peers to have diabetes, heart disease, and arthritis. Health and Disability in Ky Stats
  • We are five times more likely to have a stroke, depression, and COPD.

2.  Physical barriers persist – too few health services and resources are accessible. 

• • ___% of healthcare providers fail to comply with the ADA.
  • Only 40.7 percent of physicians were very confident about their ability to provide the same quality of care to patients with disability

3.  Stereotypes, stigma, and bias persist – too few healthcare providers are culturally and professionally knowledgeable about disability.

• People with disabilities face barriers related to common misconceptions, stigma, and attitudes among providers.
  • In a nationwide survey, only 40% of physicians reported feeling confident about their ability to provide the same quality of care to patients with disabilities as their other patients.  
  • Only 56.5% said they welcomed patients with disabilities into their practices.  
  • In focus groups, many physicians expressed explicit bias against people with disabilities and reported strategies for discharging them from their practices. 

See p. 7-8 of the 2023 Final Report of the National Institute of Minority Health