The significance of research to practice during the COVID-19 pandemic

摘要

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented and swift changes to all of our lives. Threats posed to health and wellbeing are magnified for people with intellectual disabilities, due to both individual and social structural factors. As the position statement from the Department of Developmental Disability Neuropsychiatry, University of New South Wales, Council for Intellectual Disability, Inclusion Australia, and the Australian Association of Developmental Disability Medicine (University of New South Wales, 2020), summed up: People with intellectual or developmental disability are particularly vulnerable to adverse outcomes associated with COVID-19. Many individuals are within a high-risk category because of poor health status, low levels of health literacy, reliance on third parties to support access to care, and health and disability sectors that are not yet adequately equipped to meet their health needs. These groups, as people living with disability, are at further risk of prejudice and attitudinal biases that devalue their lives and deprioritise their access to preventative, screening and treatment measures for COVID-19.