Only 40.7% of physicians in the U.S. report being very confident in their ability to treat disabled patients, and only 56.5% strongly agreed they would welcome disabled patients into their practices (Iezzoni et al., 2021). Among medical students, one third hadn’t covered 6 out of 12 intellectual disability-related topics, and half expressed they needed more education on intellectual disability (Burge et al., 2008). People with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) face not only systemic ableism (Persad et al., 2009; Mello et al., 2020) but also bias and resulting mistreatment from their healthcare providers (Ward et al., 2010; Swaine et al., 2013; Havercamp & Scott, 2015). These inequities can be mitigated by more education for healthcare students (Eddey et al., 1998; Long-Bellil et al., 2011) and increased interaction with disabled people (Sahin & Akyol, 2010).

I am partnering with the Arc of Massachusetts to create an Operation House Call-like program for undergraduate pre-med/pre-health students. Operation House Call brings disabled people to medical schools to talk about their experience with healthcare and sends medical students to provide home-health visits to disabled people. As a pre-med student, I am organizing presentations to pre-med/pre-health clubs at UMass on the difficulties people with IDD face when seeking healthcare and how treatment practices can improve. I will connect students with organizations where they can gain experience working with people with IDD and provide a resource, developed by people with IDD, with suggestions for treating patients with IDD.