Cancer screening inequities and people with intellectual disabilities—what should we do to close the gaps?

Abstract

Evidence from electronic health records is transforming what we know about the health inequalities experienced by people with disabilities. In The Lancet Public Health, Amina Banda and colleagues produced another excellent example of this approach, using large-scale data from the Netherlands to demonstrate that participation in cancer screening programmes is around 20% lower for people with intellectual disabilities than in the general population.¹ The inequities were remarkably similar across the breast, cervical, and colon cancer screening programmes, even though the programmes are different in terms of targeted age and gender, and the demands placed on the participant. The findings are also consistent with reports from elsewhere, despite the divergence in how the screening programmes operate and target participants in different countries.² This Article also adds a piece to the puzzle of explaining why people with intellectual disabilities are dying earlier than the general population.³