Access to general health care among people with disability in the Western Pacific: a scoping review of quantitative evidence

Objective: The objective of this scoping review is to compare access to general health care services for people with disability and people without disability in countries of the World Health Organization Western Pacific Region (WPRO). Introduction: Inequalities in access to health care for people with disability are well documented globally, yet the extent of these disparities within the Western Pacific Region remains unclear. Existing evidence suggests persistent gaps in coverage, quality, and affordability of general health services for people with disability, warranting a comprehensive mapping of current research in this diverse region. Inclusion criteria: This review will include studies involving people with disability of any age or gender, defined in accordance with the UNCRPD and ICF, including those identified through diagnoses, impairment types, or functioning measures. People without disability will form the comparison group. Eligible studies must examine access to general healthcare, measured through coverage, utilisation, quality, or affordability, within any WPRO country, and report comparative outcomes between people with and without disability. Studies limited to mild impairments, editorials, commentaries, protocols, conference abstracts, and grey literature will be excluded. Methods: A three-step search strategy will be used to identify published studies. An initial limited search of MEDLINE (PubMed) and CINAHL was conducted in December 2025, followed by a comprehensive search of EMBASE (Ovid), MEDLINE (Ovid), Global Health (Ovid), CINAHL and Web of Science. Searches will be restricted to English-language studies published since 2015. Following duplicate removal, titles and abstracts will be screened independently by two reviewers in Covidence, with full texts assessed against the inclusion criteria and reasons for exclusion recorded. Data extraction will be performed in duplicate using a piloted tool capturing participant characteristics, disability measurement, health service use, and comparative outcomes. Extracted data will be summarised in tables and charts, accompanied by a narrative synthesis, with results organised by type of disability and access measure. The review will follow the JBI methodology for scoping reviews, and study selection will be reported using a PRISMA flow diagram.