Interprofessional Core Curriculum for the IDD Workforce

St. John Fisher University/University of Minnesota Pilot Project

A flexible core curriculum that can be used by organizations working in IDD health, integrated into academic credit-bearing courses, or incorporated into a service learning project.

An image from the Interprofessional Core Curriculum. A slide titled Providing Care to the Whole Person with information about the medical, social, human rights, and biosocial-ecological models of disability. There is a photo of a woman talking on the lower left side. — *An image taken from the program.*

The Golisano Institute for Developmental Disability Nursing at Fisher created an online Interprofessional Competency-Based IDD Core Curriculum (ICC-IDD) in partnership with Special Olympics International for use by the IDD workforce. Subject matter experts from the University of Rochester, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Daemen University, and the University of Minnesota contributed content. The flexible curriculum introduces the target audience to the field of neurodiversity and can be used as a standalone offering or as part of an orientation program or professional development activity. The ICC-IDD program can also be used in higher education as a scaffold for a credit-bearing course, as part of a service-learning project in a community-based organization, or through integration (of one or more of the content modules) into an existing course where appropriate. The program features an optional internship that provides students with an additional learning experience. The project was piloted and evaluated at five academic institutions, including the University of Minnesota, in spring 2023. More than 400 students have completed the five-module sequence.

Student Feedback
“I really enjoyed the training and think that it is very beneficial for nurses (and frankly all people who work with people) to take and gain a better understanding of those with IDD.”