Rethinking Data Collection in Special Olympics Healthy Athletes: A Call for Universal Design for Learning in the Health Promotion Discipline.

Since 1997, Special Olympics has conducted over 2 million health screenings (i.e., healthy athlete screenings), creating the largest publicly accessible health data set for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Although Special Olympics responded to a call to action to improve this database, concerns about the reliability of available data still exist, especially regarding the "Health Habits Interview" within the health promotion discipline. Although designed to educate athletes about health behaviors, reduce concerns, reinforce good habits, and promote health education, questions about response validity from this survey remain. Applying Universal Design for Learning principles to health promotion components could improve self-reported health data by offering flexibility and choice. This viewpoint aims to highlight strategies to reduce repetitiveness and increase engagement for the Special Olympics athletes in self-reporting their health behaviors. Incorporating Universal Design for Learning could improve health promotion and reporting of self-reported health behaviors in people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and strengthen understanding of health in this population.