Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2024 Feb;28(2):301-315.
doi: 10.1177/13623613231168444. Epub 2023 May 10.

Barriers to healthcare for Australian autistic adults

Samuel Rc Arnold  1   2 , Georgia Bruce  3 , Janelle Weise  1 , Caroline J Mills  3 , Julian N Trollor  1   2 , Kristy Coxon  3
Affiliations

Barriers to healthcare for Australian autistic adults

Samuel Rc Arnold et al. Autism. 2024 Feb.

Abstract

This study looked at how Australian autistic and non-autistic adults experience barriers to healthcare. We asked autistic and non-autistic adults to complete the Barriers to Healthcare Checklist Short-Form (BHC). We analysed data from 263 autistic adults and 70 non-autistic adults. We found that autistic adults experienced more barriers to healthcare than non-autistic adults. Gender diversity, feeling more anxious, having greater disability and feeling unsatisfied with social support contributed to barriers to healthcare in autistic participants. We recommend interventions such as developing and implementing a national action plan, similar to the National Roadmap for Improving the Health of People with Intellectual Disability (2021) to reduce barriers and address unmet healthcare needs of Australian autistic adults. We also recommend working with autistic adults to develop new policies and strategies, implementing environmental adaptations to health care facilities, and increasing Autism education opportunities for health professionals to address gaps in knowledge.

Keywords: access; adult; autism; autistic; healthcare.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of conflicting interestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. All Party Parliamentary Group on Autism. (2019). The autism act. 10 years on: A report from the all party parliamentary group on autism on understanding, services and support for autistic people and their families in England. https://www.autism.org.uk/what-we-do/campaign/not-enough/about-the-autis...
    1. Arnold S. R. C., Foley K.-R., Hwang Y. I., Richdale A. L., Uljarevic M., Lawson L. P., Cai R. Y., Falkmer T., Falkmer M., Lennox N. G., Urbanowicz A., Trollor J. (2019). Cohort profile: The Australian Longitudinal Study of Adults with Autism (ALSAA). British Medical Journal Open, 9(12), Article e030798. 10.1136/bmjopen-2019-030798 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Arnold S. R. C., Higgins J. M., Trollor J. N. (2020). Health services for Australian autistic adults: Commentary on ‘The experiences, views, and needs of health professionals who provide care to adults on the autism spectrum’ (Urbanowicz, Parkin, van Dooren, Girdler, Ciccarelli, & Lennox, 2020). Research and Practice in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 7(2), 193–198. 10.1080/23297018.2020.1753566 - DOI
    1. Arnold S. R. C., Uljarević M., Hwang Y. I., Richdale A. L., Trollor J. N., Lawson L. P. (2019). Brief report: Psychometric properties of the Patient Health Questionaire-9 (PHQ-9) in autistic adults. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 50(6), 2217–2225. 10.1007/s10803-019-03947-9 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2020). Australian Statistical Geography Standards (ASGS) edition 3. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/standards/australian-statistical-geogr...

Publication types