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Aging Among Women with Disabilities

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"No matter how much I was admired by others or by myself, there was still much more I had to face. "My Accident" and "My Polio" were not just my past; they were part of my future and my present".

 There are 53.9 million Americans with a disability (Jans and Stoddard, 1999); 28.6 million are women and their numbers are increasing (Gerschick, 2000). The increase is partly due to a longer lifespan for persons with disabilities, which is most pronounced among those aging with a disability since childhood (Campbell and Barras, 1999; Campbell, Sheets and Strong, 1999). For illustration, the average life span has increased for the nearly 700,000 with cerebral palsy and the almost 1 million polio survivors (Campbell, 1998). Apologetically, their increased life span has been accompanied by social and health problems (Campbell; Harrison & Stuifbergen, 2001).

Women with disabilities experience high rates of negative stereotypes, poverty, high rates of institutionalization (G. Frank, 2000) and increased secondary conditions and co-morbidities with aging (Harrison and Stuifbergen, 2001). These problems are expensive to the individual, the family and society. The health risks related with aging with a disability have prompted the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to include the removal of health disparities amongst people with disabilities as one of its 2010 goals, which follows the goal to eliminate the disparities associated with gender (U.S. DHHS, 2000).