NCD urges requiring disability clinical care curriculum of health professionals to address health disparities of disabled Americans
For Immediate Release
November 3, 2026
WASHINGTON –Today, the National Council on Disability (NCD) released a policy brief addressing the national impact of the absence of disability-focused training among medical professionals.
A Public Health Failure: The Lack of Disability Clinical Care and Competency Training of Medical Professionals examines the toll of this absence of training on the health care experiences of people with disabilities.
In 2022, NCD developed a Framework to End Health Disparities of People with Disabilities for policymakers that encompassed five core recommendations, one of which calls for requiring comprehensive disability clinical care curricula in all U.S. medical, nursing, and other health care professional schools.
The new policy brief looks into the effect of a lack of disability clinical care training on health disparities of people with disabilities, as well as its impact on diagnostic over-testing, and undertesting.
In response to NCD’s Request for Information when developing the brief, numerous individuals with disabilities and their families shared troubling experiences with healthcare providers. One mother, a nurse herself, with a son with significant intellectual disabilities, described difficulty in finding urgent care or emergency department physicians who would treat her son. Another described an individual with developmental disabilities who required emergency gallbladder surgery after being turned away by the same physician three times in one week. The accounts NCD received demonstrated how inadequate disability competency can lead not only to ableist behaviors towards patients with disabilities, but also serious consequences for patients’ health.
The brief includes recommendations to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; state lawmakers; and medical accreditation associations.
“People with disabilities should never have to wonder whether the doctor they see is prepared to care for them,” said NCD Acting Chairman Neil Romano. “Yet, for too long, our health care system has allowed medical professionals to complete their training without learning how to treat millions of Americans with disabilities. That is a public health failure, and it is one that we have the power to correct,” he said. “Disability clinical care and competency training must be a standard part of medical education, not an afterthought.”
“People with disabilities are not rare. We are patients in every community across the country, and we deserve health care providers who are prepared to treat us,” said NCD Councilmember Theo Braddy. “It is time to stop treating disability clinical care training as optional,” he said. “Our health is not optional, and the training should not be either.”
“As a person with a disability, I have spent years navigating health care providers who did not always trust what I communicated about my needs,” said NCD Councilmember Sascha Bittner. “When I needed treatment for a serious illness, my doctors were not equipped to effectively communicate with someone with my disability or even listen to those I designated to speak for me when I needed effective communication the most, and it resulted in even greater harm to my health.”
NCD as an independent federal agency provides recommendations to the President, Congress, federal agencies, state, local, territorial and tribal governments on disability policy.
The report is available for download at NCD.gov.
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