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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2017 Jun 6.
Published in final edited form as: JAMA. 2016 Dec 6;316(21):2271–2272. doi: 10.1001/jama.2016.10544

Table 1.

Characteristics of Students with Disabilities and Participating Medical Schoolsa

Students (N=1547)
Student characteristics No. Percent
Students receiving accommodations 1512 97.7
Type of disability
  Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder 522 33.7
  Learning disability 333 21.5
  Psychological disabilityb 310 20.0
  Deaf or hard of hearing 34 2.2
  Visual impairment 46 3.0
  Mobility disability 39 2.5
  Chronic health issue 202 13.1
  Other functional impairmentc 61 3.9
School characteristicsd Schools (N=89)
Public ownership (vs. private ownership) 51 57.3
School region
  Central 20 22.5
  Northeast 26 29.2
  Southern 29 32.6
  Western 14 15.7
Financially integrated with parent university (vs. other)e 75 84.3
Community-based school (vs. not)f 14 15.7
a

Data are reported for 89 of 91 responding schools (97.8%) that reported complete data for disability type. Gender information (not shown in table) was complete for 86 of 91 responding schools (94.5%); among these schools, 648 (43.3%) students with disabilities were male and 849 were female (56.7%).

b

Psychological disabilities included the following: adjustment disorder, anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, depression, eating disorder, cognitive disorder, schizophrenia or other psychotic disorder, and other psychological disability.

c

Other functional impairment included non-mental health related disorders that do not fall into one of the prescribed categories of disability, but that result in a functional impairment for the student and render them eligible for accommodations and protection under the Americans with Disabilities Act; an example would be loss of a limb resulting in the need for assistive technology but that does not cause mobility issues or chronic health issues.

d

School characteristics are from the Association of American Medical College’s (AAMC) Organizational Characteristics Database.

e

Financial integration with parent university refers to a medical school for which budget and financing are subject to parent university authorization. This is in comparison to free-standing medical schools or those that are financially autonomous.

f

A community-based medical school relies on community hospitals or clinical facilities to achieve their educational mission rather than a traditional academic medical center hospital and received full accreditation in 1972 or later (after the "community-based" movement in medical education).