The Center for Dignity aims to identify and reduce life-limiting healthcare inequities for people with disabilities. In an effort to better understand where these inequities lie for people with disabilities, we started our work by conducting a gap analysis. A gap analysis is a tool that is used to help investigate and create a plan to fix a problem or issue, utilizing a 4-step process in which one identifies the current state of an issue, identifies the ideal future state, finds the gaps between the two and then creates a plan to close those gaps. We have focused our work to five main areas and have a subcommittee dedicated to each topic:
Mental Health/Suicide Prevention
COVID-19: see below
For the COVID-19 Workgroup, the Gap Analysis provided us with evidence that there are inequities in healthcare vis-á-vis both the treatment of COVID-19 and the vaccination against COVID-19. Such as:
- Rationing of critical care through Crisis Standards of Care (triage protocols)
- Increased exposure/risk through institutionalized congregate care
- Lack of prioritization for people with disabilities for the administration of the vaccine.
