How can we improve the health of people with developmental disabilities?

People with developmental disabilities can live healthy lives. Many federal and federally-funded programs help people learn to live well with a disability. We list some of these efforts below.

• The National Center on Physical Activity and Disability (NCPAD)
  Physical activity is good for everyone. Being active helps people get healthy and stay healthy. The NCPAD Web site has information about physical activity for people with disabilities. Read about getting started with an exercise program, building playgrounds that all children can use, finding summer camps, and adapting games and sports so that everyone can take part. Search the NCPAD database to find information about a specific disability or find out about fitness or recreation programs where you live. NCPAD also has a monthly newsletter on physical activity that you can read online or get by e-mail. [Go to the National Center on Physical Activity and Disability Web site]
  

• The National Women's Health Information Center: Women with DisAbilities
  Twenty-six million American women live with disabilities (Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services). The Office of Women's Health in the Department of Health and Human Services has created a special section on their National Women's Health Information Center Web site devoted to information and resources for women with disabilities. The Web site covers many topics, including access to health care and breast health services, reproductive health, parenting, and special issues affecting older women, as well as materials on different types of disabilities. [Go to the Women with DisAbilities Web site]
  

• Closing the Gap: A National Blueprint to Improve the Health of Persons with Mental Retardation
  People with mental retardation grow up and grow older and need good health and good health care, just like anyone else. But people with mental retardation may face extra problems in staying healthy and in finding the right health services when they are sick. In December 2001, the U.S. Surgeon General held a conference on health disparities and mental retardation. Closing the Gap: A National Blueprint to Improve the Health of Persons with Mental Retardation is the official report from that conference. The report identifies problems and proposes solutions. It sets goals in several areas to improve the health of people with mental retardation, including health promotion and community environments, knowledge and understanding, quality of health care, training health care providers, health care financing, and sources of health care. [View the complete report and related materials on the Surgeon General's Health Disparities and Mental Retardation Web site]
  

• CDC’s Disability and Health Program
  The Disability and Health program at CDC funds states and universities to study how people with disabilities can live healthy lives and to help people do so. It also supports information centers on various aspects of disability and health. The program’s Web site has information about making health care and recreation settings accessible to people with disabilities. It also has information about making it easier for people with disabilities to learn about health issues on the Internet or at meetings. [Go to CDC’s Disability and Health Web site]
  

• The Follow-Up Study of Children with Developmental Disabilities
  In the mid-1980s, CDC conducted the Metropolitan Atlanta Developmental Disabilities Study (MADDS), a study of cerebral palsy, epilepsy, hearing loss, mental retardation, and vision impairment in 10-year-old children living in metropolitan Atlanta. A comparison group of children who did not have any disabilities also took part in the study. The Follow-Up Study of Children with Developmental Disabilities contacted many of the original study participants years later, when they were young adults. They were asked questions about their health, living arrangements, socialization, employment, quality of life, use of services, and independence. CDC has started analyzing the information collected in the Follow-Up Study and will be looking at such issues as obesity, pain, and use of health services among young adults with disabilities as well as what environmental factors (such as wheelchair ramps) make it easier for young adults with disabilities to carry out their daily activities. Study results will be posted on this Web site as they become available. [Read more about MADDS]

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Date: October 29, 2004
Content source: National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities