About
This infographic shows healthcare access barriers for adults with disabilities. It also shows how many adults in the United States have a disability.
Description
Title: Disability Impacts All of Us
- Communities
- Health
- Access
More than 1 in 4 adults (28.7 percent) in the United States have some type of disability. Graphic of the United States displaying figures of people with a disability and people with no disability.
- 13.9 percent of U.S. adults have a cognition disability with serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions.
- 12.2 percent of U.S. adults have a mobility disability with serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs.
- 7.7 percent of U.S. adults have an independent living disability with difficulty doing errands alone.
- 6.2 percent of U.S. adults are deaf or have serious difficulty hearing
- 5.5 percent of U.S. adults have a vision disability with blindness or serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses.
- 3.6 percent of U.S. adults have a self-care disability with difficulty dressing or bathing.
Disability and health
Adults with disabilities are more likely to have obesity, smoke, have heart disease, and have diabetes:
- 40.5 percent of adults with a disability have obesity while 30.3 percent of adults without a disability have obesity.
- 20.9 percent of adults with a disability smoke while 10.2 percent of adults without a disability smoke.
- 10.4 percent of adults with a disability have heart disease while 3.7 percent of adults without a disability have heart disease.
- 16.6 percent of adults with a disability have diabetes while 7.9 percent of adults without a disability have diabetes.
Disability and health care access
Healthcare access barriers for working-age adults include
- 1 in 4 adults with disabilities 18 to 44 years do not have a usual healthcare provider
- 1 in 4 adults with disabilities 18 to 44 years have an unmet healthcare need because of cost in the past year
- 1 in 6 adults with disabilities 45 to 64 years did not have a routine check-up in the past year
Making a difference
Public health is for all of us.
Join CDC and its partners as we work together to improve the health of people with disabilities.
- Building inclusive health programs
- Improving access to health care
- Promoting healthy living
- Monitoring public health data
- Researching and reducing health disparities
Contact us: disabilityandhealthbranch@cdc.gov
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Disability and Health Data System (DHDS) [Internet]. [updated 2024 July; cited 2024 July 15]. Available from: http://dhds.cdc.gov