Participating in cancer research among people with intellectual disabilities

Earlier this year the Maarten van der Weijden Foundation sponsored research by the Department of Primary and Community Care concerning cancer in people with intellectual disabilities (ID). Thanks to the support from this foundation, research was carried out into the participation of people with ID in (population) screening for cancer.

In addition, there is an international assumption that other risk factors play a role in this specific group and that this group are diagnosed at a later stage. This suspicion has not been researched before in the Netherlands. An article on this topic was recently published in the journal Cancer. Primary and Community researcher and co-author Maarten Cuypers: 'We compared cancer mortality in people with and without ID in the Netherlands between 2015 and 2019. It would appear that cancer is the cause of death in people with ID relatively more often than in people without ID, especially among people with cancer types for which there is population screening in the Netherlands'. Last weekend Maarten van der Weijden collected part of the remaining research money for the project by means of a successful world record attempt, by swimming against the current for more than 32 hours! With this record, he won more than nine thousand euros.

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