Health Disparities Among Adults with Physical Disabilities or Cognitive Limitations Compared to Individuals with No Disabilities in the United States

Background: National survey data indicate the number of individuals reporting a disability is rising. Those with disabilities experience a large number of barriers to health promotion and disease prevention programming. However, only a limited number of studies have used nationally representative data to examine the health status of individuals with disabilities in comparison to those without disabilities. We used the Medical Expenditures Panel Survey (MEPS) to examine whether the association between disability and prevalence rates for common chronic diseases, use of preventive care and health care expenditures.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective analysis comparing the health of adults with physical disabilities or cognitive limitations to individuals with no disability using data from the 2006 full year consolidated data file from the Medical Expenditures Panel Survey (MEPS). We used chi-squared tests, t-tests, and logistic regression to evaluate the association.

Results: Individuals with disabilities had significantly higher prevalence rates for seven chronic diseases than persons with no disabilities. The disability groups were also significantly less likely than the no disability group to receive three types of preventive care, and to have disproportionately higher total health care expenditures.

Conclusions: These data suggest that adults with disabilities and chronic conditions receive significantly fewer preventive services and have poorer health status than individuals without disabilities who have the same health conditions. This indicates a need for public health interventions that address the unique characteristics of adults with disabilities, to establish better use of health care expenditures and improved quality of life for individuals with disabilities.