Disability Research News

The LiveWell RERC is pleased to announce the funding of 5 new assistive technology apps slated for development and release in 2020 as part of our App Factory development project.

The Department of Transportation is seeking input on a ...

Job gains were minimal for Americans with disabilities at the close of 2019, according to today’s National Trends in Disability Employment – Monthly Update (nTIDE), issued by Kessler Foundation and the University of New Hampshire’s Institute on Disability (UNH-IOD).

In a recent NIDILRR-funded study, researchers asked working-age adults with disabilities about their experiences of social involvement and feelings of isolation. The researchers wanted to find out how factors such as the number of disabilities, living arrangements, and employment were related to social involvement and perceived isolation. They also wanted to find out if these relationships were different for people living in rural vs. urban parts of the country.

Researchers at the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center: Individual-Level Characteristics Related to Employment Among Individuals with Disabilities looked at data from 932 people with disabilities who applied for VR services in Ohio in 2014.

Researchers at the Rehabilitation and Engineering Research Center on Technologies to Support Successful Aging with Disability interviewed 24 older adults who received at least 4 days of caregiving each week. Half of the participants lived in independent living facilities, such as senior living communities, and had hired individual care providers, while the other half lived in assisted living facilities that normally provided supportive services.

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has published a new NCCIH Clinical Digest for Health Professionals on ...

The National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) at ACL has funded 64 new projects in fiscal year 2019, ranging from six-months long Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) projects building new technology to five-year centers conducting research and...

Researchers from a project Risk of Early Mortality After Spinal Cord Injury looked at 2,979 adults with SCI who were treated at a large city hospital. All of these individuals had SCI for at least a year before filling out a self-report assessment about their health and lifestyles. The individuals answered questions about their injury severity; current age and age at injury; race/ethnicity; gender; and whether they were underweight, about normal weight, or overweight for their height.

The NIDILRR-funded Rocky Mountain ADA Regional Center (90DP0094) has published a new course, Accessible Voting Places, to its ...

Researchers on the project “Do Animations Facilitate Symbol Understanding in Children with Autism?” enrolled 27 children with ASD in a...

Researchers at the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Developmental Disabilities and Health enrolled 33 peer health coaches, 35 staff mentors, and 311 program participants with IDD in a study to test the Peer-to-Peer HealthMessages Program. The peer health coaches were adults with IDD who received services from local CBOs and who wished to become volunteer peer health coaches. The mentors were staff working at CBOs serving the peer health coaches and other adults with IDD.

As the opioid epidemic has evolved into a national crisis, the need for treatment has increased greatly. Medication-assisted treatment (MAT) is a “whole-patient” approach to the treatment of opioid use disorder (OUD) that combines the use of medications and psychosocial supports, such as therapy, counseling, self-help groups, and case management. MAT effectively treats OUD by decreasing opioid use and opioid-related overdose deaths.

Adults with I/DD may develop dementia at an earlier age and have early signs that are more difficult to identify than in other adults. As the population of older adults in the United States continues to rapidly increase, this group will likely need additional services and supports.

Providers, social workers, and other professionals must better understand families’ subjective complexity and needs to provide more effective consumer driven programs. Participant Directed (PD) programs offer care recipients greater choice and control over the services and supports that they need to meet long-term care needs. Care recipients can choose who they want to provide care to them and can control their own budget. Overall, PD programs lead to lower unmet needs and higher levels of satisfaction.

Latinx children with autism are diagnosed later and receive fewer services than their non-Latinx counterparts. This occurs due to several challenges faced by families.The care that families receive is often perceived by parents as inappropriate or of poor quality. This may be due to several factors, including a lack of cultural and linguistic competence of service providers.

The Administration for Community Living (ACL) at the Department of Health and Human Services launched elderjustice.acl.gov, an online gateway to seven ACL resource centers which support the independence and community inclusion of older adults and adults with disabilities.

The Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) at the Department of Labor has issued an updated version of its guide, Building an Inclusive Workforce (PDF).

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) have released a brief report, ...

Research from the NIDILRR-funded North Texas Traumatic Brain Injury Model System Center (NTTBIMS) was recently featured in a news segment, ...

Researchers at the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Community Integration and Participation of Individuals with Psychiatric Disabilities looked at data from the PULSE Healthcare Survey, a large national survey of adults ages 18-65 conducted annually by Truven Health Analytics. The data for this study came from 42,761 respondents who answered questions about their mental health and parenting status.