# Identifying and Measuring Domains of Structural Ableism to Advance Health for the Disability Community

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA · 2024 · $597,522

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
Structural ableism, defined as the processes, policies, and institutions that privilege able-bodied people over
disabled people, is a root cause of health inequities faced by the disability community. A necessary first step to
addressing these disability health inequities is to create validated measures of structural ableism, which is the
goal of this five-year project. This project parallels foundational work across other forms of structural oppression,
such as structural racism, classism, ageism, sexism, and heterosexism, and has three specific aims. Aim 1 will
characterize the multiple factors that comprise the construct of structural ableism, which will improve our
understanding of the multidimensionality of structural ableism in ways that support measure development. This
aim synthesizes historical, policy, and qualitative approaches, drawing on extant texts and key informant
interviews. Aim 2 develops and validates an individual-level measure of structural ableism. In partnership with
the disability community, we will translate our findings from Aim 1 into a comprehensive measure of an
individual’s experiences of discrimination across domains of structural ableism. This measure will facilitate the
identification of relationships between structural ableism and health outcomes at an individual level. Aim 3
measures structural ableism at a community level using publicly available datasets and explores its relationships
with health outcomes. We will use both participatory and statistical approaches to develop a cross-domain
composite measure of structural ableism. This includes partnering with the disability community via community
engagement studios to inform this process. The resulting measure will help quantify the relationship between
structural ableism and health outcomes at a community level. Across all three aims, we take an intersectional,
interdisciplinary, and community-grounded approach. We purposefully include disabled people across all steps
and phases of this work, with a focus on maximizing the diversity of disability perspectives by including people
across disability types and intersecting identities (e.g., race/ethnicity, gender identity, geographic location, and
other identities and demographics). Our interdisciplinary team has expertise in disability studies, public health,
medicine, health policy, systems engineering, sociology, and cultural anthropology, and is led by two disabled
PIs. Most importantly, our approach is deeply community-informed, drawing on multiple community partnerships
from local and national organizations, and a diverse advisory committee of disabled activists, advocates, and
scholars, as well as researchers with expertise in developing measures of structural oppression, such as
structural racism. By the end of the five-year project, this work will have established the characteristics of
structural ableism, developed both an individual- and community-level measure of structural ableism, and used...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10992728
- **Project number:** 1R01HD116303-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
- **Principal Investigator:** BONNIELIN SWENOR
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $597,522
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-08-01 → 2029-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10992728

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10992728, Identifying and Measuring Domains of Structural Ableism to Advance Health for the Disability Community (1R01HD116303-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10992728. Licensed CC0.

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