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Background: Communicating with people with severe/profound intellectual disabilities is essential for person‐centred, rights‐based support. Despite a proliferation of research around COVID‐19, there is a dearth of evidence exploring its impact on communication with people with severe/profound intellectual disabilities. This study aimed to explore disability support staff experiences of communicating with people with severe/profound intellectual disabilities through the COVID‐19 pandemic. Methods: A qualitative descriptive study was undertaken. A purposive sample of six disability support staff who supported people with severe/profound intellectual disabilities through the pandemic in four Irish residential services participated in online, semistructured interviews. Data were analysed thematically. Findings: Six themes were generated including unwavering commitment; running on empty; being a safe haven; empathic understanding; heightened sensitivity and new insights. Participants discussed the impact of COVID‐19 on communicating with people they support, the contextual challenges, how these were managed/overcome and new learning that emerged. Although communication challenges did present because of COVID‐19 restrictions, communication remained a priority. Conclusions: Despite the challenges experienced by disability support workers, their unwavering commitment to ensuring the well‐being of people with severe/profound intellectual disabilities was identified. This was a small‐scale qualitative study but highlights areas warranting further research and makes recommendations for practice and service planning. Accessible Summaries: The restrictions during the COVID‐19 pandemic made it very hard to interact with people.This study looked at disability support workers' experience of interacting with people with severe/profound intellectual disabilities who live in residential services.The study participants talked about how important it was to be there for a person with severe/profound intellectual disability because visitors were not allowed, and they might not understand why.It is important that we use what we learned through this challenging time to provide better support in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of COVID-19 on disabled people from the perspective of disability organisations located in the Global South. Drawing on the findings of an online survey, which received responses from 20 representatives of disability organisations located in 13 countries, this study builds on a growing body of recent research highlighting the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on disabled people, many of whom have experienced greater levels of discrimination and deeper levels of isolation and poverty as the result of inadequate state responses to the pandemic. The study also highlights the crucial role played by many disability organisations in supporting disabled people during the crisis, often filling in the gaps in mainstream service provision, and argues that they should be enabled to play a much more prominent role in the long-term recovery process in order to ensure a more disability-inclusive post-pandemic world. This paper argues that: State responses to the pandemic have often failed to take account of the specific needs and priorities of disabled people. During the pandemic, many disabled people have been denied access to essential services, cut off from the support of their caregivers, excluded from education provision and exposed to severe economic hardship. Disability organisations have offered vital to support to their members and beneficiaries, often helping to ensure that their basic needs are met. Policymakers and service providers should collaborate closely with disability organisations in order to ensure that disabled people are not left behind in the long-term recovery process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explore individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) experiences with and perceptions towards teleSCI services during the COVID-19 global pandemic in British Columbia, Canada. Using maximum variation sampling, we invited selected individuals from a larger quantitative dataset (n = 71) to partake in an interview. In total, 12 individuals participated in the study. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Interview transcripts were then coded and analysed by team members using qualitative descriptive analysis. Individuals with an SCI perceived teleSCI services to be convenient, accessible, affordable, and an effective way to access some healthcare services during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in-person healthcare was still needed by many participants to effectively manage and treat their SCI-associated secondary conditions. Our findings suggest that, in a post-pandemic world, the SCI community would benefit from blended models of healthcare delivery that leverage telecommunication technologies to increase accessibility to healthcare while still providing in-person care for assessments and treatments. Individuals with an SCI perceived teleSCI services to be convenient, accessible, affordable, and an effective way to access some healthcare services during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in-person healthcare was still needed and desired by those with an SCI to effectively manage and treat their SCI-associated secondary conditions. In a post-pandemic world, individuals with an SCI would benefit from blended models of healthcare delivery that leverage telecommunication technologies to increase accessibility to healthcare, while still providing in-person care for those requiring ongoing treatment and management of secondary conditions associated with the patient's SCI. TeleSCI services offer the potential to allow healthcare professionals and SCI specialists to collaborate (digitally) with patients at the same time. This patient-centered approach could not only help healthcare professionals strategize effective remedies to better manage secondary conditions associated with SCI but could result in overall better-quality care received by those within the SCI community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Municipalities and nonprofit organizations play a major role in administrating services that support individuals with disabilities. The purpose of this study was to explore how these organizations responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in regards to service delivery and programming for people with disabilities. This qualitative interpretative description study used semi-structured individual interviews for data collection. Recordings of the interviews were transcribed. Then the transcripts were analyzed qualitatively for themes following an inductive approach. Twenty-six individuals working for nonprofit organization or municipalities participated in the study. Six themes were identified: doing more with less; adapting rather than creating new services; ongoing consultation with stakeholders; feeling successful at adapting the services; being innovative with fundraising and embracing radical change. Flexibility and iterative user-centered approach appeared to be common coping strategies. Remote services were privileged to adapt service delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a study which examined the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on adults' access to medical care services by presence and type of disability which showed that adults with disabilities experienced significant disparities in delayed and unmet need for medical care. Topics covered include the factors contributing to inequities in delaying medical care and unmet needs, the limitations of the study and the implications for policy and practice.

An editorial is presented on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people with disabilities and implications for health services research. Topics include strengthen health systems being inclusive and responsive to the needs of people with disabilities including during crises; and health services for people with disabilities having significant negative impacts on functioning and wellbeing.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the state of Mississippi. As multiple waves continue to challenge public health resources, widespread racial, ethnic, and age-related disparities have highlighted new challenges and opportunities for a coordinated state response. During the initial waves, midlife and older adults were disproportionately affected and a multiorganizational approach was implemented to combat poverty and associated barriers like resource availability, fears, social isolation, vaccine access, and vaccine hesitancy. Lessons learned will inform best practices as the state continues to navigate the pandemic and move forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I explore the asymmetry of value and power inherent in African communitarian philosophy's assumptions about personhood and the implications of these assumptions for disabled people's access to healthcare in the COVID-19 pandemic era. While African communitarian philosophy forms the fulcrum on which people in an African community thrive and survive, it is also essentially laden with an ontology of exclusion that prioritizes some people as persons over other people who are cast as non-persons. Disabled people -- including persons with albinism, autistic people, persons with epilepsy, and persons with angular kyphosis -- are excluded as non-persons in this way and are thus unable to enjoy the support of the communitarian structure. In pursuance of the objective of this essay, I begin with an exposition of the nature and contents of African communitarian philosophy. I proceed to analyse the conception of personhood deeply rooted in African philosophy and, by implication, the exclusion of certain beings and persons from the African communitarian philosophical structure. I then show the privileges in terms of value and power that people included within the community of selves enjoy as opposed to the disvalue and lack of power that those excluded from this community face. I show furthermore how this devaluation and disempowerment can become major challenges to wellbeing and healthcare for disabled people, particularly hindering access to healthcare even during a pandemic. I conclude by arguing for the importance of a broad sense of community in African philosophy rather than the narrow sense of community that is currently in place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As COVID-19 crosses the globe, disabled people are subject to new medical and discursive realities. Focusing on the consequences of the latter, we utilize news reports from Canada and the UK to argue the current language of pre-existing conditions represents disability as non-life, explaining away the material realities facing disabled persons. This language ignores the distribution of care work in our societies, poverty, and other forms of exclusion facing disabled people and the population more generally. Work on ventilator users points to these existing inequalities, obscured as they may be. This story is not new. Outlining existing narratives within disability studies challenging disability as deadly biological and economic deficiency and situating the 'pre-existing' terminology therein, we look to work in disability studies and bioethics to challenge the disability-death equation. We end reviewing counter-narratives by and for disabled people, highlighting the ongoing and life-affirming resistance throughout the disability rights movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issue/problem: People with disabilities are disproportionately exposed to the risks of COVID-19, due to underlying health conditions, as well as on account of mechanisms introduced as a response to COVID-19. This study examines the disability inclusiveness of government measures to COVID-19 in Brazil and Chile. With more than one billion people with disabilities worldwide, it is important to examine the inclusiveness of official government responses, in order to protect and mitigate the impacts of the pandemic for this population. Description of the problem: Government responses have a direct impact on the capacity of people with disabilities to protect themselves against healthrelated, economic, and social consequences of the pandemic. In order to examine official measures, we conducted documentary research, using framework analysis, and studied official documents published from February 1st, 2020 until June 30th, 2021. The aim was to explore the inclusiveness of government responses in areas such as access to healthcare, and social welfare. Results: We analysed 41 documents in total. The findings highlight that while both countries took steps to ensure access to healthcare, and relevant information, as well as financial support, they also implemented policies - or did not undertake any at all - that often resulted in an amplification of existing inequalities. Neither country included people with disabilities and their organisations in decision-making processes. Lessons: This study illustrates how oficial government responses taken by Brazil and Chile - while positive, in several aspects - do not fully address the needs of people with disabilities. In order to ensure response to COVID-19 is disability-inclusive, it is necessary to translate recommendations into practice, consider people with disabilities both in mainstream policy and in disability-specific measures, and focus on the long-term reconstruction phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]