Facility Related Barriers to Healthcare Access for Persons on the Autism Spectrum in West Virginia

John Haddox West (Virginia University)

Numerous books, advocacy organization reports, and journal articles suggest there is ample headroom specific to improving healthcare access for persons with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This research project (West Virginia University IRB 1803024751) focused on identifying those barriers related to the physical characteristics of healthcare facilities, with the ultimate goal of creating design interventions to address those barriers. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from a Design School, and Autism Training Center, and an Occupational Therapy School investigated the frequency with which persons with ASD face such barriers by adding a frequency measure to the Barriers to Healthcare Checklist (Short Form)—an instrument developed by Raymaker, D. M., McDonald, K. E., Ashkenazy, E., Gerrity, M., Baggs, A. M., Kripke, C., … Nicolaidis, C. (2017). The modified checklist was then incorporated into a survey that allowed respondents to elaborate on any space-related physical barriers they faced. The survey was made available to persons with ASD, as well as those who were caregivers for persons with ASD, via a large contact list of an autism training center. Of the seventeen assessed barriers, those related to the waiting room (environment and experience) scored the highest in terms of being encountered most frequently. Focus groups were conducted to better understand the highlighted barriers and to explore potential design solutions, both physical and virtual, with the target population.

Keywords: Autism Spectrum Disorder, healthcare access, barriers, design interventions