Special Olympics and UIC team up to research aging individuals with disabilities

The University of Illinois at Chicago will receive $4.25 million over the next five years for research on aging individuals with disabilities, and the award will be partially matched by Special Olympics International.

UIC's Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Aging with Developmental Disabilities (RRTC) will start receiving its money on October 1 from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR), which is part of the U.S. Department of Education.

"This new funding that starts in October is going to build on [our previous research] but it has more of a lifespan focus," said professor and head of RRTC, Tamar Heller, Ph.D. She added that not much research has been done on adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

The UIC center received a similar grant in 2003, according to a spokesman from the Department of Education.

The RRTC received the grants in 2003 and in 2008 due to its well-received proposals in peer review and the progress it made in its activities, he said.

One out of the seven studies that will make use of the grant money will also use health screening data collected from athletes participating in the Special Olympics, a project partner with RRTC.

"The Special Olympics does screenings for thousands of people around the world and we're going to be working with them to look at some of that screening data," Heller said.

Heller and her research team will use this data to determine, over time, what risks or secondary conditions people with disabilities have that may be related to their disability. For example, Heller explains that individuals with Down's syndrome have a higher propensity for osteoporosis.

"The Special Olympics population is very much a convenience sample for UIC," said Special Olympics' senior vice president for constituent services and support, Stephen Corbin. He agrees with Heller that more research needs to be done on adults with disabilities, especially in terms of what risk factors and environmental variables affect overall health.

So for the next several years, RRTC will use Special Olympic athletes' health screening data to track long-term health trends.

"It's one thing to show something in a lab or a clinic, but we will want to show how to improve lives in the real world," Heller said.