Earlier this month, Associate Professor of Sociology Scott Landes published a titled "Disability Mortality Disparity: Risk Of Mortality For Disabled Adults Nearly Twice That For Nondisabled Adults, 2008–19" in the August edition of . The report is the first of its kind to address the substantial knowledge gap on health disparities in the United States between and non-disabled people. Landes answered questions from SU News about his latest research.
Tell me about the new research that you just published. Between 2008 and 2019, all-cause risk was nearly two times higher for disabled than nondisabled adults. This mortality disparity was not just present for some disabled people, but persisted for disabled people across age, gender, race-ethnicity, and health status groups.
Additionally, a mortality disparity was present for all of the 28 disability status combinations examined in the study (e.g., vision only; vision, hearing and mobility; etc.
). While all disability status combinations were associated with a higher mortality risk compared to nondisabled adults, the degree of this disparity was more severe for people with a (activities of daily living) disability. In finding that disabled adults have a mortality rate that is twice as high as nondisabled adults, what does that tell you about the state of health care for people with disabilities? Research provides substantial evidence that disabled people experience ongoing barriers to accessing quality care, ranging from problem.