Many health workers around the world report wanting more training on disability and some have reported a lack of comfort providing care to patients with disabilities. Training can play a critical role in filling these skills gaps for health care workers to improve access to quality health care for people with disabilities.
The Missing Billion Initiative developed a core base training product on disability inclusive healthcare that can be deployed across various geographies and healthcare worker types. This training is co-developed by LSHTM and the Missing Billion and is based off a tested and effective training to increase the knowledge and skills of healthcare workers when assessing, treating, and referring people with disabilities to care.
This base product can be adapted to local contexts in collaboration with the Missing Billion Initiative, please reach out if you have interest in the product and potential collaboration.
The base health care worker training product includes:
A train-the-trainer (TTT) manual, to prepare local trainers to teach the content to healthcare workers in their communities
A disability inclusive healthcare training manual for the trainers
A disability inclusive healthcare training manual for the participants
These documents are available to organizations interested in rolling out trainings on disability to HCW. In order to get an understanding of the contents, please click on the button below. You will be able to download a version of the base HCW training adapted to the East African region where it was developed.
In alignment with the Missing Billion Initiative’s commitment to ensuring materials are accessible to all, large text versions can be made available and all documents are screen reader compatible.
In Migori County, Kenya partnered with Lwala to train more than 400 CHW on how to provide quality, informed care to people with disabilities. With support from the human-centered design firm SCOPE and a team of advisors with lived experience of disability, the base training documents have been adapted to meet the needs identified in the county from an extensive discovery process. Read about the training project on Lwala’s blog.
In Mozambique, we supported the Ministry of Health to integrate a strong emphasis on disability inclusion in the Training of Trainers programme and revised CHW training manuals to integrate disability-inclusive content. Read about this work in our blog.
In March 2023, we collaborated with the Community Health Impact Coalition (CHIC) to survey CHW in sub-Saharan Africa about their needs for disability training. 322 CHWs from across sub-Saharan Africa responded to the survey. Most CHWs saw people with disabilities in their practice and felt confident providing care for these patients. However, 75% said they had never received training about disability and nearly all (99%) said they wanted more training about disability.
To help understand existing training initiatives and the disability training needs of health workers, we have developed the Health Care Worker Survey tool.
This tool aims to measure a settings’ existing disability training initiatives and the training needs of health care workers. Ministries of Health, health facilities, and other organisations developing and implementing training programmes should use this tool to tailor disability training to the local context and better meet the disability training needs of health workers. The tool takes about 10-15 minutes to administer and consists of 27 questions about participants demographic background, prior training, and training needs related to disability. It is aimed to have health care workers as sole participants, and should not include team leads or administrative workers of health facilities.
We have piloted the tool in one country and look forward to hearing from others who wish to use it in their own settings. Please contact info@themissingbillion.org with the heading ‘HCW survey’ to receive the tool and more information on how to use it.
You can also have a look at sample survey results:
In addition to these tools, MBI Associate, Sara Rotenberg, has completed her PhD in disability training for health workers, including developing a framework for a standardised curriculum and training evaluation. Please contact Sara (srotenberg@themissingbillion.org) if you would like more information or these tools.
