Recommendations

RECOMMEDATIONS

Recommendations To Reduce COVID-19 Health Differences for People with Disabilities

This report is the second part of our multi-year effort funded by the Pennsylvania Department of Health through the CDC’s National Initiative to Address COVID-19 Health Disparities Among Populations at High-Risk and Underserved to investigate, educate, and report on problems that people with disabilities in Pennsylvania have accessing appropriate information and help during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The first report published from this project details the challenges that people with disabilities, their family members, and caregivers had receiving health care during the pandemic. This report focuses on solutions and recommendations for the Pennsylvania Department of Health to address these barriers.  The report in technical language may be found here.

Chinese          Spanish

A brief overview (2 pages) of key recommendations from the report

• Recommendations Fact Sheet (PDF)
• Hoja informativa de recomendaciones (PDF)
• 建议情况说明书 (PDF)

(Note: The above reports are available in Braille by request. To make a request contact Nancy Shirley at nshirley@thearcpa.org  or by calling (717) 234-2621, ext. 106.)

Contributors to the report included people with lived experience of a disability, caretakers, and family members of those with a disability, and professionals in support fields. The contributors represented diverse types of disabilities, including physical, intellectual, developmental, and behavioral, as well as emotional, sensory impairment, and complex medical disabilities.

Hundreds of individuals from diverse racial, ethnic, and rural populations participated in the initiative through regional and local interviews, surveys, meetings, and listening tours that served as focus groups over the last year to identify the barriers, core solutions and recommendations.

The 10 recommended core solutions specific to the Pennsylvania Department of Health were:

1. Involve people with disabilities, their families, and caregivers in policy making and healthcare decisions.
2. Reactivate the Governor’s Cabinet and Advisory Committee for People with Disabilities.
3. Keep helpful policy changes from the COVID-19 pandemic.
4. Expand community-based healthcare, including telehealth services and mobile clinics.
5. Include disability representatives in the Office of Health Equity Advisory Committee.
6. Provide disability-specific training for healthcare professionals.
7. Designate people with disabilities as a Medically Underserved Population.
8. Collect standardized data on the health needs of people with disabilities.
9. Provide information in multiple languages, easy-to-understand and easy to access formats.
10. Remove disability as a factor in healthcare decision making during emergencies.