PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Pediatr.
Sec. Social Pediatrics
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fped.2025.1486325
This article is part of the Research TopicInterdisciplinary Approaches to Address Health Disparities for Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities from Underserved CommunitiesView all 9 articles
Adolescent to Adult Health Care Transition for Persons with Intellectual and Developmental Disability: Current Barriers, Next Steps
Provisionally accepted
Shwetha Ramachandran1
Solveig H Stensland1Julie H Corder2Carrie A Cuomo2
Thao-Vi Dao1,2,3
Marvin R Natowicz1,4*- 1Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, United States
- 2Department of Primary Care Pediatrics, Children's Institute, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH, United States
- 3Department of Internal Medicine and Geriatrics, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH, United States
- 4Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, Genomic Medicine, Neurology and Pediatrics Institutes, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Georgia, United States
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The transition of health care from adolescence to adulthood is a challenging time, especially for persons with intellectual and developmental disability (IDD), where navigating health care transitions can be particularly difficult. Persons with IDD are an especially vulnerable population and they and their caregivers encounter barriers in obtaining high quality health care transition. These barriers result in the suboptimal utilization of health care transition services and consequent poorer health outcomes. Herein, we discuss barriers to obtaining high quality pediatric to adult transitional health care for persons with IDD. We then discuss next steps, some of them well recognized and others underappreciated, for addressing these barriers and thereby achieving an important public health need: the attainment of high quality pediatric to adult health care transition for persons with IDD.
Keywords: Intellectual Disability, developmental disability, Intellectual and developmental disabilities, Healthcare transition, Health care transition, adolescent to adult, pediatric to adult
Received: 26 Aug 2024; Accepted: 14 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ramachandran, Stensland, Corder, Cuomo, Dao and Natowicz. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Marvin R Natowicz, Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, Genomic Medicine, Neurology and Pediatrics Institutes, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Georgia, United States
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