A Diverse and Socially Inclusive America Needs to Share Its Story

POSTED BY TARA D. SONENSHINE / FEBRUARY 12, 2013

Tara D. Sonenshine serves as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.

Diversity is our strength, and everyone, including persons with disabilities, has important contributions to make.

That was one of the overarching messages at the 10th Special Olympics 2013 World Winter Games in South Korea this month, where athletes Tae Hemsath and Henry Meece -- born in South Korea with developmental disabilities -- returned to their birth country as Special Olympics athletes. Tae competed as a snowshoe racer, Henry as a snowboarder.

That same message resonated today throughout a public forum, where participants at Gallaudet University came to learn about opportunities in international exchange for persons with disabilities, and for members of the deaf community.

The audience was moved by the words and experiences of speakers, including U.S. Representative Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), a former Army helicopter pilot who lost her legs in Iraq; T. Alan Hurwitz, President of Gallaudet and recipient of the DeafNation Inspiration Award for Higher Education in 2012; and Dr. Christie L. Gilson, a Fulbright alumna who is the first blind member of the Fulbright Board.

The event, underscored the State Department's longtime commitment to the human rights, dignity and inclusion of U.S. citizens and citizens abroad with disabilities.

Working through our Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), we offer a wide array of programs that support diversity and social inclusion. And those efforts are supported by the overall messages of inclusion shared by our Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP) and our embassies.

In September 2012, our Professional Fellows program launched its Empower Program, with four grants totaling $1.8 million to promote the rights of persons with disabilities in more than 20 countries. And IIP has dedicated the month of February to an exploration of human rights and social inclusion through disability rights, working with our Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.

We also work in close collaboration with Judith Heumann, State's Special Advisor forInternational Disability Rights, who served as a member of the U.S. Presidential delegation at the Special Olympics Games in South Korea.

Working with Special Advisor Heumann, for example, our embassy in Kathmandu invited 70 NGO activists to engage with American disability advocate Helena Berger. Speaking from Washington, she suggested ways they could urge their political representatives to create legislation to address the needs of persons with disabilities.

ECA's Office of Citizen Exchanges regularly includes sports-related activities in its work. For example, SportsUnited has included the theme of Sport and Disability in its Open Competition, with exchanges scheduled this year for Brazil and Mexico. Over the coming year, our Sports Envoys and Visitors programs will take place through embassies in all the regions.

With our arts exchanges, too, we work to raise awareness and enrich our programs. In October, for example, actors and teachers from Maryland-based Quest: Arts For Everyone traveled to Mexico, where they led workshops on visual theater and professional development, and raised awareness of challenges faced by the deaf performing arts community. And Jim Bingham's filmFor Once in My Life, a documentary about singers and musicians with disabilities was featured in our headliner film and filmmaker exchange program, the American Film Showcase. Jim shared his film with a variety of communities in Belarus and China.

These and many other programs build on a longstanding commitment that extends back to the mid-1990s, when ECA created a grant that established the National Clearinghouse on Disability and Exchange. We continue to work with the Clearinghouse to promote opportunities for persons with disabilities in the United States and abroad. And we support the Department's global network of EducationUSA advising centers to better serve students with disabilities looking to study in the United States.

Our message of disability inclusion is central to telling America's story, because we believe that no story can be complete -- and no challenges fully addressed -- without everyone's full involvement. Inclusion isn't just the right thing to do. It's the smart thing to do.

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Athletes With Disabilities To Take On NBA Stars

By MICHELLE DIAMENT

February 15, 2013Text Size  A  A

In a unique matchup, athletes with disabilities are set to square off on the court this weekend with some of basketball’s best.

A dozen Special Olympics basketball players from around the world will convene in Houston for a special “unified” exhibition game as part of the NBA’s All-Star weekend. They will form two competing teams that will be rounded out with players from the WNBA and NBA legends Dikembe Mutombo, Chris Mullin, Detlef Schrempf and Ron Harper.

The game Sunday afternoon will take place just hours before the NBA’s All-Stars take to the very same court. And, in the same fashion as the All-Star game itself, players will be divided into two teams — one representing the “East” and another the “West.”

Athletes with intellectual disabilities from across the United States and as far away as China and Namibia are expected to participate.

The unified sports model being showcased in Sunday’s game is part of a larger effort by Special Olympics to form teams and sports leagues around the world composed of people with intellectual disabilities and typically developing individuals who compete alongside each other.

The NBA All-Star game gathers the best players from throughout the league for a special, nationally-televised game once a year. This is the second year in a row that the NBA has included a unified basketball game as part of the weekend of events.

(Read story Here)

Chronic disease and disability found in women on Medicaid

A new study by a researcher with the East Tennessee State University College of Public Health shows that women with low incomes have a high prevalence of physically disabling conditions and chronic disease.

Dr. Amal Khoury, a professor and chair of the ETSU Department of Health Services Management and Policy, led a study of 75,000 women who are on Medicaid, the federal/state government’s health insurance program for people with low incomes and resources. Khoury’s work was published in Disability and Health Journal.

In Khoury’s study, 33 percent of women on Medicaid had been diagnosed with high blood pressure and 20 percent were depressed, rates that are significantly higher than the general adult population. She and her collaborators looked at the prevalence of eight other chronic diseases and found that the women were at risk for those, too.

Looking at the rates of physical disability led to particularly troubling revelations, Khoury said.

Of those 75,000 women, almost half had been diagnosed with a disabling condition, such as multiple sclerosis, arthritis, injury, back disorder or Parkinson’s disease.

Women with a physical disability had significantly higher rates of all 10 chronic diseases than women without disability. And among women who used a device — such as a walker, crutches or wheelchair — to aid in mobility, 72 percent suffered from hypertension, 40 percent from diabetes and pulmonary disease, and 35 percent from depression.

Khoury said those who took a glance at the conclusions without knowledge of the demographic parameters might rightly assume that the women included in the study were elderly — a variable that can raise the rates of chronic disease and disability. But advancing age was not a factor, she said.

“We studied women who were from the age of 18 to 64, and the average age was 38,” Khoury said. “You first look at this data in terms of the human cost, in terms of how disability and chronic disease affect these women in respect to their quality of life and their length of life. And then there’s the cost to society. These are not women of retirement age. These are rates of chronic disease and disability in a working-age population, so the economic loss to society and the impact on health care costs is substantial.”

Khoury’s research team studied women in Florida, but she said the results could be applied to any of the 50 U.S. states, even those that have an alternative government insurance program.

The enrollment criteria for TennCare closely resemble those of Medicaid, she said.

“Our findings support the need for improved chronic disease prevention in younger female Medicaid beneficiaries, especially those with physical disabilities,” Khoury said. “Strategies to improve disease prevention, screening and treatment in the younger adult population may curtail higher disability rates in working-age adults and lower Medicaid and Medicare costs in the long run.”

Rachel Ward, a doctoral student in the ETSU College of Public Health, is a listed co-author on the paper.

Some parents skeptical of 'special needs' school vouchers

MADISON (WRN)  The governor’s proposal to create a school choice voucher program for special needs students doesn’t sit well with everyone.

Under Governor Scott Walker’s education plan, more money would be invested in private school vouchers for special needs students, but not for public schools. Parents of kids with special needs gathered at the Capitol Monday with the group Stop Special Needs Vouchers to urge Governor Walker to reconsider.

Kimberly Nerone of Wauwatosa knows first hand how, together with the protections of IDEA and IEP, children with special needs can find success in their public schools. “In Wisconsin we need to be improving our already strong public schools for students who have disabilities, and not chip away at them with these special needs vouchers. Please, remove the special needs voucher program from the state budget.”

Melissa Stoltz of Beloit says while public schools are required to accept all students, regardless of severity of any disability, voucher schools would have no obligation to accept any given student. “Special needs vouchers would go to students with milder disabilities that are more easily accommodated, leaving students with more moderate and severe disabilities and neighborhood schools drained of funding for shared resources such as therapists and special education teachers.”

Melissa says families who use special needs vouchers forfeit their parent and student rights and protections guaranteed in public schools by the individuals with disabilities education act. She says, “Such a wide-reaching policy change affecting some of our most vulnerable students deserves a statewide public debate in a full public hearing in a standing education committee.”