title: Primary care for adolescents with developmental disabilities.
abstract: Disability is a natural part of the human experience. To maximize potential, adolescents with disabilities require multidisciplinary transition planning and life-skill training. Health care professionals can reduce barriers to accessing health care. They can encourage self-determination and connect patients to self-advocacy organizations. They can facilitate smooth transitions to adult health care services. Careful descriptions of a patient's baseline traits and function are critical, not only to assist in person centered planning processes, but to ensure that new caregivers and clinicians have the information they need to recognize changes in function or behavior that can signal illness.
authors.affiliation: Family and Community Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, 500 Parnassus Avenue, MU3E, Box 0900, San Francisco, CA 94143-0900, USA. Electronic address: kripkec@fcm.ucsf.edu.
authors.forename: Clarissa Calliope
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Kripke
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D058445:Bullying; D002649:Child Abuse / Q000517:prevention & control; D003142:Communication; D002658:Developmental Disabilities / Q000628:therapy*; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D006801:Humans; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000628:therapy; D010347:Patient Care Planning; D010348:Patient Care Team; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000379:methods
keywords: Adolescent health; Developmental disability; Intellectual disability; Interdisciplinary care; Primary care; Transition; Youth with special health care needs