HOW WE HELP | HEALTH
ICS builds accessible, disability-competent healthcare capacity.
Barriers to health and wellness faced by people with disabilities are pervasive, destructive, and poorly understood. As a result, people with physical disabilities get sick and die from preventable conditions at disproportionate rates. For example, while women with disabilities do not contract breast cancer at a higher rate than the general population, their mortality rate is one-third higher due to a lack of accessible screening and less aggressive treatment when they are diagnosed, often at later stages of the disease. ICS builds accessible, disability-competent healthcare capacity in several ways.
- With our support, in 2019, New York City Health & Hospitals (H+H) Corporation opened its first radiology suite that is fully accessible to people with disabilities – celebratory ribbon cutting above!
- We educate and assist medical providers in offering accessible, disability-competent health services. To date we have trained more than 600 staff at 14 New York City hospitals and clinics. This training includes disability sensitivity and awareness training, clinical disability competence training, and accessible equipment training.
- Our award-winning Health Access Program has made accessible breast cancer screening and gynecological care available to women with disabilities at eight sites throughout New York City.
- In 2020 we initiated accessible primary care programs with our H+H partners in Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx.
We provide disability-expert care management focused on prevention, while educating our members, their caregivers and family members on how to stay healthy and out of the hospital.
People with spinal cord injuries, multiple sclerosis and other disabilities have high rates of hospitalization due to potentially avoidable urinary tract infections (UTIs) and pressure injuries.
- Pressure injuries are painful, dangerous, and cost billions of dollars annually to treat.
– 21% of ICS members are at moderate to high risk of developing a pressure injury due to their disability, yet our rate of new wound development is a remarkable 1%. - UTIs can cause bladder and kidney stones, widespread infection, kidney damage and even death.
– In members with spinal cord injury, ICS reduced avoidable hospital stays from 54% to 34% in a single year.