Advancing Disability-Inclusive Healthcare

It is no secret that healthcare has not served the needs of people with disabilities well. Despite repeated calls to teach healthcare professionals a comprehensive model of holistic care, centering the perspectives of people with disabilities, little has changed. Why? We believe many healthcare training programs do recognize and desire to change but simply do not have the curricular tools and resources. We hope that this website helps to close this gap.

The guiding principles we have used in building the curricula are:

1. Grounding disability in a holistic biopsychosocial model.
2. Centering the perspectives of people with disabilities as the experts in their conditions.
3. Adopting inclusive and universal learning strategies.
4. Integrating high-quality materials that have been developed by others.

© 2025 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. All rights reserved.

To address the lack of accessible clinical services, Dr. Caskey committed to becoming the home for a complex primary care clinic at UI-Health in the Division of Academic Medicine.  She hired Erin Hickey, MD, a new Med-Peds graduate in 2020, as medical director and member of the ADIH steering committee. This team built the LDC model of care and interprofessional team. By March of 2023, with a renovated, fully accessible clinic, the Lifespan Disability Clinic (LDC) was formally launched.

The Lifespan Disability Clinic is proud to partner with UI Health 55th & Pulaski Health Collaborative,  UI Health South Loop Physicians Group, and the UIC Department of Disability and Human Development.

The LDC typically offers the following services:

• Disability-inclusive complex primary care with an interprofessional team
• Robust care coordination of medical, behavioral health and social needs
• Mobility equipment including customized wheelchair evaluations
• Assistive technology evaluations for augmentative and alternative communication devices
• Assistance with coordinating Transportation Services
• Referral to accessible dentistry
• Accessible clinic space (at 55th & Pulaski Health Collaborative | UI Health)
• Accessible and free parking
• Behavioral Health (with telehealth option)
• Physical and Occupational Therapy (at 55th & Pulaski Health Collaborative | UI Health)
• Coordination with subspecialty care (i.e., Genetics, Wound Care, Pulmonology)
• Laboratory and radiology services (at 55th & Pulaski Health Collaborative | UI Health)
• Bilingual staff (Spanish) and access to interpretation services

To address the lack of healthcare professional training, the ADIH steering committee was well-positioned in 2023 to apply for the Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) grant, Primary Care Training & Enhancement – Language & Disability Access.

We were fortunate to be awarded support from HRSA for our project, titled “Working to right a wrong: Training medical students to care for people with physical, intellectual and developmental disabilities (E. Hickey – Principal Investigator).” As of March 2026, the award has provided 100% funding of the total costs and totaled $400,000 per year (2023-2028). The content included in our curriculum is that of the authors. The content may not reflect the policies of HRSA, HHS, or the U.S. Government.

Though the HRSA grant was focused on intellectual, developmental, and physical disabilities and the training of medical students, we have attempted to shape the curricula for use by all health professional learners.

To stay updated with us, fill out this form. To learn more about the ADIH team, click here.

The curriculum is flexible and includes modules on a variety of core topics as well as supplemental modules and individual healthcare stories of people who live with disabilities. One component of the curriculum includes an elective offered by LDC Primary Care Physicians to 4th year University of Illinois College of Medicine students called Disability Medicine.

At the conclusion of the course students will be able to:

1. Provide patient-centered and disability-inclusive care to patients with a wide
   range of disabilities.
2. Acquire a conceptual framework of disability in the context of human diversity, the lifespan, wellness, injury and social and cultural environments.
3.  Explore and mitigate one’s own implicit biases and avoid making assumptions about a person’s abilities or lack of abilities and lifestyle.
4. Understand the requirements of the ADA and Rehabilitation Act and how to apply the principles of universal design to promote disability- inclusive healthcare. Appreciate the types of health insurance, waiver services, and entitlement programs available to people with disabilities.
5. Engage and collaborate with team members within and outside their own discipline to provide high quality, interprofessional team-based health care to people with disabilities.
6. Collect and interpret relevant information about the health and function of patients with disabilities to engage patients in creating a plan of care that includes essential and optimal services and supports.

Hear LDC medical director, Dr. Erin Hickey, and fourth year medical student, Katie Walker, describe the Disability Medicine Elective. This video was recorded during the LDC open house on October 17, 2025. The extended audio version of the video includes visual descriptions of video subjects. Choose a video below:

•  Full Video (~10 min)
•  Extended Audio Version (~11 min)

• Disability Medicine Elective

The modules are open-access, can be self-paced, and include interactive learning components. They can be done in any order or as stand alone modules.

For those looking for a basic introductory overview, you might consider Understanding Disability: Language, Identity, Culture & Models.

For a more in-depth approach, we recommend the following foundational modules:

• An Introduction to Disability
• A Short History of Disability Rights in the U.S.
• Translating Law, Policy, & Universal Design into Disability-Inclusive Practices
• People with Disabilities Experience Health & Healthcare Disparities
• Michael’s Story: A Study of Barriers and Biases to Equitable Care
• Communicating with Patients with Disabilities
• Ableism in Healthcare: Where it Comes From, Why it Matters, & How to Mitigate it
• Health Insurance, Consumer-Directed Services, and Community Programs for People with Disabilities

• Full video (~5 min)
• Extended Audio Version (~6 min)

• Modules

People with disabilities live lives as diverse as those without disabilities, yet clinicians rarely know much about the fullness of these lives. Clinicians have contact bias (seeing them only in healthcare settings when they are often sick and in need of care) and tend to focus their attention on medical diagnoses. In a society in which ableism is endemic, cultural images and stories perpetuate bias and misinformation, and clinicians receive little to no education about disability, this is a recipe for poor care. They also miss the many people with disabilities who may also be living and working side by side with you in healthcare.

We believe to mitigate these stereotypes and misinformation, we need counter-narratives, or stories about the full lives of people with disabilities that are told in partnership with them. The stories included here profile people with many disability types and health conditions, who come from diverse backgrounds and embody intersectional identities. They profile activities that give learners a window into the person’s “typical day” and often provide an intimate view of their home, school, and recreational and work environments. Some will include the voices of the person’s care partners and support systems.

We invite our learners to think of these stories not as patient stories, but simply as stories of people you may encounter in healthcare settings who happen to have disabilities. For educators who wish to use these stories in discussions or trainings we offer suggested uses and reflective questions that can be used for discussion.

We have three categories of stories: Snapshots of Community members, Leaders in the Disability Rights Movement, and Health Professionals with Disabilities.

Dr. Ann Jackson, Community Immersion Coordinator, speaks with Jonathan Morgan about the impact of sharing his lived experiences with medical students as part of the Community Snapshot component of the curriculum (coming soon). This video was recorded during the LDC open house on October 17, 2025. The extended audio version of the video includes visual descriptions of video subjects.

• Full video (~11 min)
• Extended Audio Version (~13 min)

• Featured Stories

Patient Instructor sessions were designed as variations of typical standardized patient experiences. We intentionally use the term “Patient Instructors” rather than “Standardized Patients.” Our goal is to prioritize authenticity over strict standardization, allowing for more realistic and meaningful encounters. Although the Patient Instructors act out a basic clinical scenario, the emphasis of these sessions is on their holistic lived experiences with disability and healthcare. Empathetic interpersonal communication and authentic human connection are central components of the simulation experiences. Above all, the program highlights the crucial role of people with disabilities, as well as their care partners, as skilled, knowledgeable, and essential educators in health professions training.

A key part of each session is an in-depth debrief conversation between the Patient Instructor, the student, and a facilitator immediately following each simulated clinical encounter.  This experience is designed to be formative, emphasizing reflection and continued learning rather than summative evaluation.

Meg Baltes, Program Coordinator, speaks with Mary Kate DalCanton and Kelly Langosch about their unique roles in medical student education as part of the Patient Instructor Program. This video was recorded during the LDC open house on October 17, 2025. The extended audio version of the video includes visual descriptions of video subjects.

• Full video (~6 min)
• Extended Audio Version (~6 min)

• Patient Instructor/Simulated Cases