Evidence briefs

10 results

How can we promote the inclusion of people with disabilities in programme design?

People with disabilities make up approximately 15% of the world’s population. Many people with disabilities live in low- and middle- income countries (LMIC), are more likely to experience social exclusion, and socio-economic challenges like poverty, poor healthcare, and social welfare. Yet, people with disabilities are still routinely neglected from the planning and design of international development interventions that seek to improve the lives of people in challenging socio-economic environments. The adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) Article 32 promotes the rights of people with disabilities to be included in all development policies and programmes. In order to fully encapsulate the principles of ‘Nothing About Us without Us’ within development efforts, a strong knowledge base from programmes worldwide is needed to identify effective ways to promote the meaningful inclusion of people with disabilities in the design and delivery of programmes.

  • Stigma
  • Cross-cutting
SignificanceFeasibilityApplicabilityEquity
Recommendations
  • Encourage participation by building in improved systems for disability access
  • Seek engagement with a wider and more representative range of people with disabilities
  • Strengthen mechanisms to better evaluate disability-inclusion in programme design
  • Develop and make accessible opportunities for people with disabilities to gain leadership, research and programmatic skills
  • Create, adopt and maintain a collaborative ethos for programming that genuinely adopts the principle of equal partnership

What works to improve healthcare professionals’ competency on disability?

People with disabilities are at a higher risk of developing poorer health outcomes, due to their primary underlying health conditions or impairments, and unmet health needs due to access and attitudinal barriers to health services and quality care. Evidence suggests that when seeking healthcare or accessing healthcare services, people with disabilities are more likely to find the health care professional’s skills and confidence to be inadequate to meet their health needs. Moreover, healthcare professionals’ unfamiliarity with disability may lead to negative attitudes and stigma towards people with disabilities. Consequently, contributing to delayed diagnosis and treatment, lower quality of care and ultimately poorer health outcomes. As specified in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), people with disabilities have the rights to the same high quality of care as all, therefore, it is imperative to improve healthcare professionals’ competency, confidence, and attitudes in treating patient with disabilities.

  • Health
  • Stigma
SignificanceFeasibilityApplicabilityEquity
Recommendations
  • Identify potential barriers and enablers to healthcare professionals’ knowledge updating and skill training
  • Ensure continuous knowledge and skill updating on the issue of disability, especially for those working in primary healthcare centres.
  • Implement immersive learning for healthcare professionals with people with disabilities, caregivers, and representing organisations.
  • Introduction to concepts of disability should be part of the health professional training curricula.
  • Future research should focus on the long-term outcome of knowledge and skills intervention.

Remaining questions

There are no remaining questions related to this theme