FY21 Kentucky's Innovative Approach to Inclusive Health (TCAK)

Kentucky has one of the highest disability rates in the country with 34.6% of the adult population possessing an identified disability. Significant health disparities are experienced by these individuals, and there is a lack of inclusive health services, resources, and education available to them and their support networks. To address this, the University of Kentucky Human Development Institute will create an Inclusive Health Coalition including the Kentucky Department of Intellectual & Developmental Disabilities, our local Extension Office which offers SNAP-Ed programs, and local disability organizations including the Down Syndrome Association of Central Kentucky and Let’s Roll Kentucky. In working with DDID to create this coalition, we will bring together these diverse community partners to assess the needs of the community and identify barriers to inclusion and work collaboratively to create a training on inclusion strategies and solutions to overcome these barriers. These inclusion strategies and solutions will then be piloted with individuals in the community with and without disabilities through implementation and evaluation of an existing SNAP-Ed program. These efforts will allow us to create a training on inclusion strategies which can then be scaled up to use across several health and/or disability programs and organizations across the state in order to train professionals how to make their programs more inclusive and extend their services broadly to the disability community.