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 base training on disability inclusive healthcare that can be deployed across various geographies and healthcare worker types. This training was co-developed with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and aims to increase the knowledge and skills of healthcare workers when assessing, treating, and referring people with disabilities to care.
The training package includes:
A train-the-trainer 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. The training can be adapted to local contexts in collaboration with the Missing Billion Initiative.
In order to get an understanding of the contents, you can access a sample trainers manual adapted to the East African region below. All documents are screen reader compatible, large text versions can be made available upon request.
We partnered with Lwala to train more than 400 Community Health Workers on how to provide quality, informed care to people with disabilities. With support from a team of local advisors with lived experience of disability and human-centered design firm SCOPE, the base training was adapted to the needs identified during an extensive discovery process.
We supported the Ministry of Health with the development of a training module on disability that has been rolled-out nationally. In November 2024, more than 40,000 frontline healthcare workers had been trained already, with a goal of reaching 100,000 in 2025.
We supported the Ministry of Health to integrate a strong emphasis on disability inclusion in the Training of Trainers programme and revised Community Health Worker training manuals to integrate disability-inclusive content.
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.
We have developed a survey tool to help understand existing training initiatives and potential needs for further training.
This tool aims to measure a settings’ existing disability training 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.
The tool was piloted in one country and we look forward to hearing from others who wish to use it in their own settings.
Contact info@themissingbillion.org with the heading ‘HCW survey’ to receive the tool and more information on how to use it.
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.
