Did you know that people with intellectual disabilities (ID) lack access to quality health care, worldwide? Did you know that people with ID die on average 16 years earlier than those without ID?
Everyone has the same right to be healthy. Yet people with ID lack access to quality health care. That’s why it’s time to Join the Revolution for Healthcare Inclusion! Learn more about #InclusiveHealth
Have you signed the Inclusion Pledge—and shared with your friends?
Around the world, exclusion and discrimination continue to divide people with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities. We are changing that with grassroots action for inclusion. That’s Spread the Word.
Founded by two youth leaders in 2009 as Spread the Word to End the Word, the campaign originally focused on addressing a powerful form of exclusion: the word ‘retard(ed)’. Over 10 years, leaders from Special Olympics and Best Buddies collected millions of digital and physical pledges to end the R-word. Each was a commitment to acknowledge the hurt caused by the R-word and to be respectful in the words and actions taken towards people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
In 2019, Spread the Word to End the Word became Spread the Word, with a focus not just on the elimination of a word but on the creation of a new reality: inclusion for all people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The campaign remains committed to empowering grassroots leaders to change their communities, schools, and workplaces, now through a call to their peers to take action for inclusion. With this change, Spread the Word: Inclusion will give community leaders around the world the tools needed to create socially inclusive places to learn, work, and live.
This campaign was founded on the audacious belief that grassroots action could end the discrimination and exclusion faced by people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and replace it with inclusion. This remains our guiding principle. Make your pledge and take your action for a more inclusive world. Join millions who have done the same. And spread the word.