Characteristics influencing attendance at a primary care health check for people with intellectual disability: An individual participant data meta-analysis

• Health checks for people with intellectual disability lead to better health outcome.
• Characteristics of individuals attending health checks was investigated.
• People with Down syndrome were significantly more likely to have a health check.
• No other measured characteristic was associated with health check receipt.

BackgroundHealth checks benefit adolescents and adults with intellectual disability, however uptake is low despite government–funded incentives.AimTo assess the characteristics of people with intellectual disability who, when offered a health check with their primary care physician at no cost, completed the health check.Methods and proceduresData from three randomised controlled trials considering health checks in people with intellectual disability living in the community were included in an individual-patient data meta-analysis. The studies used the same health check and the participant characteristics investigated (age, sex, cause of disability, level of disability and socio-economic position) were defined identically, but participants were sourced from different settings: adults living in 24-h supported accommodation, adults living in private dwellings, and school-attending adolescents.Outcomes and resultsIn total 715 participants were offered health checks. Compared to participants with Down syndrome, participants with other known causes of disability were more likely not to attend their health check (odds ratio;95%CI) = (2.5;1.4–4.7), as were participants with no known cause of disability (2.3;1.2–4.3). These associations remained significant after adjusting for potentially confounding variables.Conclusion and implicationDown syndrome was the only characteristic positively associated with health check attendance across all study settings. Future research should focus on strategies to increase health check uptake in this population.