2021 Progress Report: The Impact of COVID-19 on People with Disabilities
October 29, 2021
FULL REPORT (PDF)
FULL REPORT (DOC)
SCOPE AND PURPOSE
On October 29, the National Council on Disability (NCD) released, 2021 Progress Report: The Impact of COVID-19 on People with Disabilities. This report was developed through a cooperative agreement with the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, in which the Bazelon center was a partner. Download 2021 Progress Report: The Impact of COVID-19 on People with Disabilities here.
This report examines COVID-19’s disproportionate negative impact on people with disabilities in (1) accessing healthcare; (2) accessing direct care support; (3) congregate care settings and transition; (4) education; (5) employment; (6) effective communication; (7) mental health and suicide prevention services; and summarizes the federal and state response to these impacts. The purpose of the report is to document the difference that disability made to one’s experiences and outcomes in the US during the pandemic.
Until very recently, federal and state healthcare data collection practices did not gather basic information about the functional disability status of patients and the public. This left people with disabilities uncounted during and after public health emergencies. Throughout this study, NCD found that this data dearth created barriers in collecting real-time accurate data about the impact of COVID-19 on people with disabilities or the healthcare disparities they experienced during the pandemic. This study makes recommendations to policy makers on ways to improve data collection on people with disabilities and their experiences that will allow for a nuanced look at how disability creates a unique difference to health disparities.
KEY FINDINGS
NCD found that COVID-19 exacted a steep toll on certain populations of people with disabilities, and the events that unfolded during the pandemic, including measures to mitigate the spread, posed unique problems and barriers to people with disabilities in each of the report’s seven areas of focus. Key findings include:
- People with intellectual or developmental disabilities, and medically fragile and technology dependent individuals, faced a high risk of being triaged out of COVID-19 treatment when hospital beds, supplies, and personnel were scarce; were denied the use of their personal ventilator devices after admission to a hospital; and at times, were denied the assistance of critical support persons during hospital stays. Informal and formal Crisis Standards of Care (CSC), pronouncements that guided the provision of scare healthcare resources in surge situations, targeted people with certain disabilities for denial of care.
- Limited opportunities to transition out of congregate settings to community-based settings, to mitigate the risk of contracting the virus, revealed continuing weaknesses and lack of sufficient Medicaid Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS).
- The growing shortage of direct care workers in existence prior to the pandemic became worse during the pandemic. Many such workers, who are women of color earning less than a living wage and lacking health benefits, left their positions for fear of contracting and spreading the virus, leaving people with disabilities and their caregivers without aid and some at risk of losing their independence or being institutionalized.
- People with disabilities and chronic conditions who were at particularly high risk of infection with, or severe consequences from the virus, were not recognized as a priority population by many states when vaccines received emergency use authorization.
- Students with disabilities were cut off from needed in-person special education services and supports and were given last or no priority when schools attempted to preserve educational opportunity. Some students under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Indian Education faced an especially challenging combination of Internet barriers on Indian and rural lands.
- People with disabilities have historically been underrepresented in the workforce even in robust economic times and the pandemic exacerbated this long-standing problem.
- Deaf, Hard of Hearing, Deaf-Blind, and Blind persons faced a profound communication gulf as masks became commonplace, making lipreading impossible and sign language harder.
- Both youth and adults who had mental health disabilities that predated the beginning of the pandemic experienced measurable deterioration over its course, made worse by a preexisting shortage of community treatment options, effective peer support, and suicide prevention support.
Click here to read the recommendations regarding healthcare, congregate care facilities, education, employment, effective communication, and mental health and suicide prevention.
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Source: Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, "The Monthly Briefing: November 2021."
