VCU RRTC

Dr. Allen Lewis, member of the Center on Health Disparities (COHD) Steering Committee and Chair of VCU Dept. of Rehabilitation Counseling, will facilitate the upcoming webcast entitled "Strategies to Address Disability Disparities" sponsored by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR). Other participants include Mr. Andrew J. Imparato, Esq. (President/CEO of American Association of Persons with Disabilities), Dr. Keith Wilson (Full Professor of Education and Rehabilitation Services and African American Studies at Penn State University), Dr. Phil Rumril (Director of Disability Studies at Kent State University’s Educational Foundation and Special Services), and Dr. Reginald Alston, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne.

This presentation will offer a roundtable discussion from a panel of experts on specific strategies, interventions and tools for addressing disability disparities toward their elimination. This webcast follows the previous one on disability disparities that was more conceptual in nature, focusing more on what specifically can be done to ameliorate disability disparities.

The social-ecological model (SEM) developed by McLeroy, Bibeau, Steckler, and Glanz (1988) focuses on planning change across five levels of context: individual, interpersonal, organizational, community, and policy. When change is planned at all five levels, then it has a higher probability of being comprehensive and sustainable.

Our goal is for participants to be able to take away from the webcast, strategies that can be implemented immediately toward the elimination of disability disparities.