Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

The periodic health exam (PHE) is an important tool in the primary care setting to help maintain good health in the population. The PHE provides an opportunity to discuss and address other health issues that are not addressed at other appointments. Studies in both Wales and Australia have demonstrated that PHE provides a way to identify previously undiagnosed health issues in adults with a Developmental Disability (DD). In 2006, Canadian consensus guidelines on the care of adults with DD were published. These highlighted the need for the PHE for this population. Yet, during the 2009/10 and 2010/11 fiscal years only 22% of adults with a DD in Ontario received a PHE. In 2011, the Canadian consensus guidelines were updated and a toolkit for physicians serving this population was distributed to all Canadian family physicians. That same year, the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services also introduced Healthcare facilitators across all regions of the province to assist adults with DD in accessing heath care, and in particular primary care. The goal of the proposed study is to use a pre-identified cohort of adults with DD and administrative data to determine if there has been an increase in the proportion of adults with DD who have received a PHE from 2009 to 2015. A secondary goal is to evaluate the effectiveness of the Canadian consensus guidelines, toolkit, and Healthcare facilitators on contributing to the uptake of PHE in this population. A lot of effort has been devoted to educating primary care physicians and supporting adults with DD in their use of primary care in Ontario since 2009, the proposed study hopes to demonstrate that these efforts are working.