Why Disability matters to health

People with disabilities can suffer poorer health for a wide variety of reasons, for example:

1. because people can’t get access to services or communicate with service providers
2. because the health of disabled people is given less priority than that of other patients
3. because an illness may wrongly be thought to be part of a person’s mental or physical disability
4. because people with long term disabilities are particularly likely to live in poverty
5. because some conditions are linked to a higher rate of particular health problems

NHSGG&C promotes the social model of disability, which means that it is up to the organisation and the people in it to ensure that disabled people have the same opportunities to enjoy good health as non-disabled people.