We Need Your Input!
We are looking for participants from the following groups:
- People with intellectual disabilities
- Family members of adults (age 16+) with intellectual disabilities
- Faculty, academic, or administrative staff in a healthcare field (nursing, medicine, dentistry, physical or occupational therapy, etc.)
- Students in healthcare fields
- Professionals working in healthcare fields (nurses, doctors, dentists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, etc.)
Participants will be asked about how to improve programs and curricula preparing students to work with people with intellectual disabilities to provide them with high-quality healthcare services in an inter-disciplinary and/or interprofessional (IPE) manner.
Background
In 2020, a consortium of five institutions (Rush University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Villanova University, and the Golisano Institute for Developmental Disability Nursing at St. John Fisher University) received funding from the Administration for Community Living (ACL) to address the gaps in health professions education regarding the health and health care of people with intellectual disabilities and developmental disabilities (ID/DD) by embedding ID/DD-related content into interprofessional health education and practice curricula. As part of activities related to the funding, faculty and students at the University of Minnesota and Rush University conducted a scoping review of literature that addressed emerging themes in the state of education of healthcare professional students about the health and healthcare of people with ID/DD.
Emerging themes were found, including educational programming that:
- Was interprofessional rather than single profession
- Developed using a theoretical and/or pedagogical approach
- Was part of ongoing programming
- Developed and/or evaluated with the involvement of people with ID/DD and/or family members
- Covered the intersectionality of ID/DD with race, ethnicity, and gender
- Included means of education not solely didactic (clinical, simulation, case studies)
- Specifically uses a social model or civil rights model/perspective.
In 2022/2023, we presented the emerging themes to stakeholders (people with IDD, members, healthcare professionals, university staff, and students in health-related fields) for discussion and for input on relative importance using the Participatory Planning and Decision Making (PPDM) process. The input of stakeholders was utilized to modify and refine interprofessional education (IPE) and practice experiences on the health and healthcare of people with ID/DD, developed with the ACL funding.
Proposed Evaluation
In 2025, we are conducting a follow-up evaluation of the IPE curriculum/course materials and implementation strategies as part of the ACL funding. Based on the project’s goals and lessons learned, we will conduct a PPDM process following the same model as in 2022/23 with the same groups of stakeholders (people with IDD, members, healthcare professionals, university staff and students in health-related fields), but with themes that will allow us to evaluate the ACL IPE efforts:
- Role of the Collective Impact Model in curriculum/course development and implementation
- Role of people with disabilities (self-advocates) in curriculum development and implementation
- Facilitators and barriers to IPE curriculum implementation
- Importance of curriculum/course topics:
- Definitions of IDD and prevalence
- Day in the life
- Strength-based approach
- Health condition teaching
- Provider bias
- Nutrition
- Screening tests
- Community agency and support staff role
- Communication
- Telehealth visits/ wellness interviews
- Health promotion
- Social model of disability
- Cultural humility
- Health disparities
- Bias against people with disabilities
- Disability intersectionality
- Self-advocacy
- Motivational interviewing
- Telehealth best practices
- Competency Base of AISLE / Reasonable accommodations (UMass)
- Diagnostic overshadowing
- Health screenings