The Gap Between Healthcare and Health

When an adult with a disability develops type 2 diabetes, Medicaid helps pay for the doctor's visits, medications, specialists, and long-term medical care that follow. When that same individual spends years struggling with obesity, low muscle mass, poor balance, and physical inactivity before the diagnosis, the fitness services that could have improved those outcomes are often not covered at all.

That is one of the reasons we started the Inclusive Fitness Foundation.

​Over the past fourteen years, we've watched families do everything they were told to do. Doctors recommended exercise. Families wanted their loved ones to be more active. Everyone agreed that movement, strength, and healthier habits would improve the quality of life.​ Then they discovered the biggest barrier wasn't motivation. It was access.

Adults with disabilities experience significantly higher rates of obesity than the general population. Obesity increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, mobility limitations, joint pain, and countless other health complications. Yet the services designed to help people build strength, increase physical activity, and improve their health are often treated as optional rather than essential.

We've seen the consequences firsthand. Individuals lose mobility. Everyday tasks become harder. Independence starts to disappear. Health complications that could have been reduced through consistent exercise become expensive medical problems that require ongoing treatment.

The same thing happens with falls. When an individual falls and breaks a hip, the healthcare system pays for the ambulance, the surgery, the hospital stay, and the rehabilitation that follows. The strength and balance training that could have reduced the likelihood of that fall happening in the first place is rarely covered.

The system will pay for the consequences of poor health. It rarely pays to prevent them. Watching families lose access to fitness services despite the clear health benefits is what ultimately led us to create the Inclusive Fitness Foundation. We realized there were individuals who wanted to participate, families who understood the value, and coaches ready to help. The missing piece was access.

​The Foundation exists to help bridge that gap because preventive care shouldn't lose importance simply because it happens in a gym rather than a doctor's office. The Inclusive Fitness Foundation is currently in the process of obtaining its 501(c)(3) nonprofit status. While we await final approval from the IRS, we've already begun laying the groundwork by building partnerships, establishing our board, and preparing scholarship opportunities for individuals with disabilities who need financial assistance to access fitness services.

We're still in the early stages, but the mission is clear: make professional fitness services more accessible to the disability community and ensure that financial barriers don't stand between someone and the opportunity to become stronger, healthier, and more independent.

Through scholarships, the Inclusive Fitness Foundation will help individuals with disabilities access professional fitness services when traditional funding sources fall short. Our goal is simple: remove financial barriers so more people can build strength, improve their health, and maintain their independence.

We started the Foundation after watching too many families lose access to services that were clearly making a difference. Not because the services stopped working. Not because the need disappeared. Simply because the funding did.

We believe the disability community deserves the same opportunity to invest in prevention as everyone else. Stronger muscles, healthier body weights, better balance, improved cardiovascular health, and greater independence shouldn't be reserved for those who can afford to pay out of pocket.
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The long-term vision is bigger than scholarships. It's helping shift the conversation around what counts as healthcare. Because when strength training helps prevent obesity, reduces the risk of chronic disease, lowers the likelihood of falls, and allows someone to remain active in their community, it isn't just fitness.

It's healthcare. And the disability community deserves access to it.