Emphasising Learning in Health Promotion Targeting Individuals With Intellectual Disabilities.

Only two of the 14 participants with intellectual disabilities were men, with one more identifying as non-binary, and all five significant others and all 11 professionals were women. The authors state this reduced the range of gender perspectives in the study. The authors state that no explicit questions about learning were asked in the workshops, so the paper's emphasis on learning as part of health promotion rests on what participants volunteered rather than on a topic the study set out to examine. The researchers did not collect information on how many people were invited and declined, or why, because they did not want to add to the workload of the staff helping with recruitment. It is therefore impossible to judge who is missing from the sample. People with intellectual disabilities were identified by contact persons within services rather than approaching the study directly. The authors say findings may not transfer to places where health and social services are funded and organised differently. This is a qualitative study of what people said in workshops. It did not compare anything or measure any outcome, so it cannot show whether any of the described strategies improves health.

The study was funded by the Swedish Research Council (grant 2022-06287), the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (Forte, grant 2024-02286) and the Sunnerdahl Handikappfond Foundation (grant F27/22). The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

The title points at learning, but the authors state plainly that no questions about learning were asked in the workshops, so learning was never directly investigated. These are themes about what people said helps in everyday health promotion, not strategies that have been tested. Nothing here shows that any of them improves anyone's health.