The Human Rights and Equity Offices at Queen’s University announced Dr. Ian Casson as the 2017 recipient of the Steve Cutway Accessibility Award. Established in 2008, the award acknowledges the efforts of faculty, staff and students who demonstrate creativity, enthusiasm, innovation and commitment to creating a learning and work environment in which persons with disabilities at Queen’s enjoy full participation.
Over the years, Dr. Casson has taken the Department of Family Medicine's longstanding commitment to the health of patients with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and helped to formalize it as the department's current IDD program. He is a leader in the department's research, education and clinical work with adults with IDD.
In 2016, Dr. Casson co-authored a report about the need for individuals with IDD to receive regular health checks, and played a lead role in developing a Health Checks toolkit to help primary health-care providers in caring for this patient population. The Health Checks program, developed by the Health Care Access Research and Developmental Disabilities (H-CARDD) program, is part of a larger research study Dr. Casson led in conjunction with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. The Health Checks program was piloted at the Queen’s Family Health Team and Toronto’s St. Michael’s Academic Family Health Team. (Posted January 2018)