{"id":2635,"date":"2024-03-10T10:02:48","date_gmt":"2024-03-10T14:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/iddhealthservicesstudy\/?page_id=2635"},"modified":"2024-04-08T08:58:18","modified_gmt":"2024-04-08T12:58:18","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/iddhealthservicesstudy\/about\/","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"

Disrupting the Cycle of Inaccessible Healthcare and Supports for Minoritized Adults with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD)<\/em> is a health equity study funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. We bring together adults with IDD, care partners, and providers to develop a culturally affirming model of supports to address the healthcare and community needs of adults with IDD from diverse backgrounds.<\/p>\n

Our central hypothesis is that minoritized people with IDD experience barriers, including structural racism, to accessing the healthcare system. Disrupting the Cycle<\/em>\u00a0has identified facilitators and barriers to equitable healthcare for people with IDD and their care partners, and has developed strategies to enhance care and support.<\/p>\n

Research Model<\/h2>\n

\"TheThe\u00a0Disrupting the Cycle<\/em> team is a true partnership between UNC researchers, co-researchers, and community partners. The first phase of Disrupting the Cycle <\/em>focused on the following:<\/p>\n

Understanding partners’ histories and experiences with providers.<\/h4>\n

Through group meetings, co-researchers shared narratives about their health care experiences, identifying people, places, and resources that were important to their stories. A larger narrative emerged around health and advocacy, including experiences with providers, researchers, legislators, friends, and family.<\/p>\n

Co-researchers geographically mapped their personal health practices, health care spaces, and their own utilization of services with consideration to characteristics, context, and health behavior.<\/p>\n

Defining health and health care priorities.<\/h4>\n

Co-researchers engaged in group dialogue around how they define health for themselves. Co-researchers elaborated how they define “health,” who they believe are important people in their lives for generating health, and how they determine health care priorities. Together, co-researchers produced a larger narrative about what is meaningful for minoritized young adults with IDD and community care supports.<\/p>\n

Developing suggestions for community partners and providers.<\/h4>\n

As co-researchers collectively shared their experiences, they developed suggestions for community partners and health care providers. Providers attended later meetings to participate in sharing their own experiences as well as to learn from co-researchers’ experiences.<\/p>\n

Research Findings<\/h2>\n

Numerous themes, theoretical contributions, and directions for community partners emerged from\u00a0Disrupting the Cycle<\/em>, including:<\/p>\n