Monitoring and evaluation of health disparities for people with disability in low- and middle-income countries: a scoping review

Abstract People with disability experience health inequities and mostly live in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), because that is where most of the world’s population resides. Despite this, existing evidence on health equity for people with disability mostly comes from high-income settings. Monitoring and evaluation of health equity are crucial for countries to address and track progress toward goals, such as the highest attainable standard of health for people with disability. This scoping review summarizes the available literature on approaches and indicators used in LMICs to evaluate health-related outcomes between people with and without disability. Peer-reviewed articles were included that were published between 2008 and 2024 that compared health-related outcomes between these 2 populations. We identified 59 eligible studies from a broad range of LMICs. Disability indicators varied, with most studies using 1 of multiple Washington Group question sets to enable disaggregation of data by disability status. Survey data were the type most frequently used; only 2 studies used administrative data. A wide range of health-related outcomes were explored; themes of maternal and child health and HIV-related outcomes emerged as key areas of focus. Disparities were consistently found, with almost all included studies reporting poorer outcomes for people with compared with people without disability. There was a noticeable lack of action taken to improve future policy or monitoring and evaluation or to enact real and meaningful change in health equity for people with disability.