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Blog with us!

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The National Center for Disability, Equity, and Intersectionality invites your blog submissions.

General Submission Guidelines

  • We are looking for submissions about disability justice, healthcare, and community living inequities faced by people with disabilities and proposed solutions to make the services within these systems more equitable. We want posts that will educate, inform, empower, and challenge people to think in new ways.
  • We are open for submissions year-round.
  • Guest blog posts are usually between 500 and 1,000 words. Please include a short bio and a photograph with your submission.
  • The National Center for Disability, Equity, and Intersectionality team may work with you to edit your blog. Our publication schedule varies. Please allow at least one week between submission and proposed publication date.
  • Authors and photographers have rights. Please credit others’ work in your submission and cite our blog if you republish.
  • Following publication, we will share your blog post via Facebook, Twitter, and our newsletter.

Accessibility

We are committed to accessibility. Please use alt-text and captions for images. Do your best to write in plain-language. We will only post videos that are captioned.

How to Submit

Send your 500-to 100-word posts with a suggested title wo leah.smith@cchmc.org. Include a brief bio, picture with image description, and social media accounts that you’d like to share.

Intersectionality 2.0: Growing in Our Thinking and Philosophy of Care

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by Amber Davis, PhD, MSW, LCSW-C
Research Associate, Johns Hopkins University Disability Research Center
adavi212@jhu.edu

As an intersectional researcher I am committed to understanding the ways that intersectionality shows up and causes challenges for neurodiverse Black/African Americans and their families,[1] with an emphasis on the experiences of the Black autism community. In doing this work, it is a Big Task to be pioneering capturing race-autism intersectionality and resultant harms (i.e., additive hardships, chronic discrimination and cumulative trauma), quantitatively and qualitatively. Understanding psychosocial mechanisms for risk of Black autistic adults is a critical component to my program of research. In being steeped in this work and in the spirit of evolving as a scientist, a personal + ethical challenge I have been faced with in the past year as an early-stage researcher is to not stop there even when so many researchers seem comfortable and complacent with doing only this…

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Black background with yellow text that reads: Lawyers, Mental Health, and the Character and Fitness Investigation The National Center for Disability, Equity, and Intersectionality. ThinkEquitable.com

Lawyers, Mental Health, and the Character and Fitness Investigation

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by Jamie Polinsky

Every October students across the United States wait with bated breath for their bar exam results to be posted. After studying for the LSAT, three years of law school, and even more time spent for the bar exam, everyone wants to finally see their hard work pay off and start a legal career. Yet, there are law school graduates who, even after passing the bar exam, cannot be sworn in as attorneys because they checked “yes” on a question on the Character and Fitness portion of the application and then were determined to be “unfit to practice law.[1]”

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Blog Post. Accessibility: The Questions I'm Learning to Ask. Teal background with white text. The National Center for Disability, Equity, and Intersectionality logo

Accessibility: The Questions I’m Learning to Ask

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By Tracy Waller, Esq., MPH

On July 26, 2023, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) turns 33. The ADA was intended to prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities in areas including employment, transportation, housing, and public accommodations. While the ADA and other discrimination laws exist to protect people with disabilities (PWD) from discrimination, the reality is that PWD must grapple with the aftereffects of loopholes within the laws daily. Often from a shortage of governmental financial resources available or allocation, PWD still face a lack of accommodations regularly.

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Purple, Blue and Turquoise background with brown hand holding a cell phone with an image of a person with long black hair smiling. Text: Blog: To Disclose or Not to Disclose. Online Dating, Disability, and creating your online profile with confidence

To Disclose or Not to Disclose

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By Chris Mason-Hale, BSW

Disclaimer: The writer of this blog identifies as a quadriplegic operating a manual wheelchair. The contents of this blog are an opinion of the writer based on their lived experience and several years as a peer mentor for people with disabilities and not meant to omit the experiences of other people with disabilities.

Online dating has made romance – or at least meeting people – more accessible than ever. Dating sites give people with disabilities a platform to maybe find that “someone special.” Many people form meaningful relationships–some local and some long distance. For those with disabilities, dating apps can be a remedy for the isolation brought on by barriers such as limited transportation options and the COVID-19 pandemic which have made it difficult to meet new people. It also provides an opportunity to disclose your disability on your terms. However, whether you’re swiping left, being left on read without a response, or swimming in dating matches, online dating is a heart-pounding experience…just not always in a good way. For those with disabilities, the worry that their disability will be too much for a potential partner is often very real. Which begs the question, “To disclose or not to disclose?”–But is that the right question?

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The Intersection of Driving, Disability, and Being Black. Image of police lights flashing

The Intersection of Driving, Disability, and Being Black

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Michael Saunders
Director of Money Follows the Person
Independence Now

Traffic stops are already dangerous and have proven deadly for black drivers, and when you add disability, your risk increases. My fear of a traffic stop is one that I have all the time. Not long ago, it came true on the DC Capital Beltway. I was driving down the beltway when I looked in my rearview mirror to see a state trooper following me. I knew at that point he would pull me over. When he did, my heart was beating because I immediately thought about our location and what he would do when I told him my wallet was in my wheelchair backpack. At first, he didn’t get out of the car, and he was talking through his car speaker. I couldn’t tell him I was in a wheelchair, and I couldn’t do what he asked, which was to get out of the car. I wasn’t speeding too much that required me to get out, so I didn’t understand why that was being requested.  

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Text: New Blog Post. "Time Lost to Disability Management is a Health Inequity.' by Annie Carver, Esq. Image of a clock with thousands of little clocks coming out of it. The National Center for Disability, Equity, and Intersectionality logo

Time Lost to Disability Management is a Health Inequity 

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by: Annie Carver, Esq. 

“Health inequities are difference in health status or the distribution of health resources between different populations or groups arising from the social condition in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age.” There are many health inequities that are associated with disability – caused by stigma, discrimination, poverty, exclusion from education and employment, and other barriers within the healthcare system. One health inequity that is rarely named for people with disabilities is lost time, or the time cost associated with being disabled. There is a time cost associated with navigating welfare and healthcare systems, coordinating medical care, and managing personal care and symptoms. On top of that, public inaccessibility and legal barriers isolate disabled people from their greater community; therefore, disabled people often have to navigate the complicated coordination of their care without the support system that many non-disabled people enjoy. These time barriers also tend to disproportionately impact those with multiply marginalized identities, particularly people of color and queer people. 

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Text: The Paradoxical Perspective on Paxlovid Purple Background with The National Center for Disability, Equity, and Intersectionality logo

The Paradoxical Perspective on Paxlovid

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By Tracy Waller, Esq., MPH

“If it’s COVID, Paxlovid.” Or is it? Pfizer launched its most recent commercial for Paxlovid in February 2023 and has gone full throttle into its advertisement of the drug. Pfizer first received Emergency Use Authorization (“EUA”) for Paxlovid in December 2021 and then received a revised EUA in February 2023. The commercial touts the drug as a “miracle” drug of sorts. On November 6, 2022, the Office of Veterans Affairs released a study showing that Paxlovid can reduce the risk of symptoms of long COVID. Pfizer includes in its commercial for the drug, as required, that certain classes of people are excluded from taking Paxlovid based on negative drug interactions; however, the gravity of the number of people who are ineligible to take the drug is not readily apparent and leaves large swaths of the United States’ (“US”) and global populations without access to this life-saving drug. The lack of access to Paxlovid for the people most vulnerable to COVID-19- the elderly, people with disabilities, and other immunocompromised people – emphasizes the need for pharmaceutical companies to focus on developing treatment options that meet the needs of so many of those left behind.

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Community of Practice- About Us

Posted on | by Leah Smith | Leave a Comment on Community of Practice- About Us
The National Center for Disability, Equity, and Intersectionality. An Administration for Community Living Project of National Significance. Text included below image

The National Center for Disability, Equity, and Intersectionality

Who We Are
We are a group of people with disabilities, family members of people with disabilities, professionals, and collaborators committed to learning and teaching about the interests, needs, and wants of people with marginalized identities and lived experiences of disabilities. Five partner organizations founded our Center.

What We Do
The National Center for Disability, Equity, and Intersectionality identifies and works together to reduce inequities in healthcare, community living, and justice for people with disabilities. The Center: (1) amplifies the voices of people with disabilities, (2) creates materials to impact positive change, and (2) shares information with people with disabilities, their families, their communities, and policymakers.

How We Work
We convene a Community of Practice (CoP), which is a group of people collaborating to dismantle systems of ableism, racism, cisgenderism, and other forms of oppression. The Community of Practice will meet monthly and may work between some meetings to develop resources and tools. The Center is also home to the Changemakers Coalition, which supports the diversity of youth with disabilities working for a more equitable future.

How Can You Join
If you are interested in joining the CoP, e-mail Leah Smith at leah.smith@cchmc.org. To find out more about the Center, visit our website and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.