Author: Luan

Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer for Kaiser Permanente joins distinguished board

NEW YORK (November 4, 2015)– The National Organization on Disability today announced that Dr. Ronald L. Copeland has been elected to its Board of Directors. The unanimous vote came at NOD’s Board of Directors meeting. Dr. Copeland is Senior VP, National Diversity and Inclusion Strategy and Policy & Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at Kaiser Permanente, one of America’s leading health care providers.

“Dr. Copeland has devoted his professional life to creating a more equitable and just society, using research and data that are so critical to addressing inequities, whether in health care or in the workforce,” said NOD Chairman, Gov. Tom Ridge. “Like NOD, Dr. Copeland believes that a nation that treats all its citizens, regardless of their circumstance, with care and compassion, is not only more just, but stronger and more prosperous. NOD is delighted to welcome Dr. Copeland to our Board.”

Dr. Copeland has led Kaiser Permanente’s efforts to use electronic health records to improve the quality of care for patients from traditionally underserved groups. He is a member of Kaiser Permanente’s Executive Diversity and Inclusion Council, a group composed of the chairman/CEO and other C-level leaders who oversee executive accountability for embedding the diversity and inclusion strategy throughout the organization. Additionally, he is chair of the Kaiser Permanente National Diversity and Inclusion Council, which develops and implements the diversity and inclusion strategy and policy recommendations.

He previously served as President and Executive Medical Director of the Ohio Permanente Medical Group, which he joined in 1988 after completing a six-year tour in the United States Air Force Medical Corps. Copeland is a board-certified general surgeon and a fellow of the American College of Surgeons.

“I am honored to be elected to the board of directors of the National Organization on Disability,” Dr. Copeland said. “The work of the NOD is very much aligned with Kaiser Permanente’s efforts to improve the lives of our members, patients, and the communities we serve. I look forward to this important partnership and collaboration.”

In the world of retail, copycat pricing is not unusual. When one retailer slashes prices, others are sure to follow. When it comes to hiring approaches, those of us in the business of finding employment opportunities for people with disabilities, we’re hoping that same copycat approach holds true, particularly when one of the retailers that is taking the lead is Starbucks. The company that revolutionized the way we drink coffee could very well do the same for how corporate America hires and cultivates talent.

In a race for talent, companies are now realizing that people with disabilities are a largely untapped pool that, as a result, has seen unemployment rates remain stubbornly high when compared to the general population. So when an employer the size of Starbucks plants a flag and says it is going to make this a priority, others are likely to follow.

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Jennifer Calfas, USA TODAY9:54 a.m. EDT July 31, 2015

One in five American adults have at least one kind of disability, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Thursday.

The study, drawn from 2013 data, says 53 million Americans have a disability.

“We know disability types and related challenges can vary,” said Elizabeth Courtney-Long, a health scientist with CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. “In order to understand and address their needs, we need to understand their diverse circumstances. This report provides a snapshot into that.”

The findings come days after the 25th anniversary of the implementation of theAmericans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits the discrimination of someone because of his or her disability in the workplace, transportation and community.

The researchers defined a disability as a self-reported difficulty in one or more of five areas: vision, cognition, mobility, self-care or independent living. For people to have one or several of these disabilities, the study says they have to identify with the specific qualifications the researchers defined in questions.

The study defines a disability with vision as blindness or difficulty in seeing with glasses on. A disability for the cognition category means having a hard time with memory or making decisions due to a physical, mental or condition. For mobility, a disability entails having difficulty while climbing stairs. A self-care category means needing help dressing or bathing, and an independent living disability was defined as needing help to run errands.

The study is also the first state-by-state analysis of Americans with disabilities from CDC. The report found Southern states often had higher percentages of people with disabilities. For example, in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee, 31.5%, 31.4% and 31.4%, respectively, of the state adult population has a disability.

Southern states are also more likely to have chronic diseases, including heart disease and diabetes.

The percentage of Americans in Midwestern and Northern states were nearly half those from Southern states. In Minnesota and Alaska, 16.4% and 17.7% of state residents, respectively, reported a disability.

The report also found adults who have lower education levels, lower income or are unemployed were more likely to have a disability. Broken down by race, the study revealed African American and Hispanic Americans were more likely to have a disability than white Americans.

Carol Glazer, president of the National Organization on Disability, a non-profit dedicated to the disabled community in the U.S., told USA TODAY the findings should be viewed to see how disability affects income and unemployment levels.

The non-profit’s research has found that 20% of people with disabilities have a job, while 69% of people without disabilities are employed. However, younger Americans with disabilities have nearly the same access to education as children without disabilities, Glazer said. Glazer is optimistic that more educated and disabled individuals will lead to more employment among the disabled community.

 “Where education goes, employment will follow,” she said.

The CDC partners with several national and state disabilities programs, including the Special Olympics Healthy Athletes program and the National Center on Health, Physical Activity and Disability, among others.

Courtney-Long, a co-author on the CDC report, said she believes the report will allow public health officials to understand the prevalence of Americans with disabilities.

The Americans with Disabilities Act, which President George H.W. Bush signed into law on July 26, 1990, opened doors to people with disabilities to enter the workforce without discrimination and creation of more accessible locations and working conditions.

“By prohibiting discrimination and ensuring opportunity, the ADA has opened doors and brought dreams within reach,” said Attorney General Loretta Lynch at an anniversary event on July 23. 

“It has made our workforce stronger and our society more inclusive. And it has enhanced our nation’s understanding and recognition of all that Americans with disabilities can achieve when they are given more and nothing less than an opportunity to contribute on equal terms.”

The findings also come during the Special Olympics World Games held in Los Angeles. About 6,500 athletes from 165 countries gathered this year for the event, which has occurred since 1968. Individuals with intellectual disabilities participate in the Games each year.

“My husband and I have seen Americans unite in so many ways across the country,” said first lady Michelle Obama at the Opening Ceremony on July 25. “These Games are a perfect reflection of that unity. They show us that we’re all in this together – that we can lift up our friends and neighbors, and that we can bring out the best in each other to reach even higher heights.”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/07/30/american-adults-disability/30881975/

This post originally appeared on The Huffington Post where NOD President Carol Glazer regularly contributes to the ongoing discussion about disability in America and how to close the employment gap for people with disabilities.

This week many are celebrating the unprecedented improvements that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has brought to the quality of life for millions of people with disabilities in the 25 years since it was signed into law on July 26, 1990. But the work of guaranteeing access to the American dream is far from over. When it was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush amid an overwhelming show of bipartisan support, the ADA promised to enable people with disabilities access to go to school, to church, to the theater and to work. Like the Civil Rights Act on which it was modeled, the ADA viewed the exclusion of people with disabilities from civic life and the workforce as discrimination. Keeping people with disabilities from the mainstream was no longer justifiable. When President Bush signed the ADA, he noted its significance as a civil rights act, meant to “ensure that all should have the opportunity to blend fully and equally into the rich mosaic of the American mainstream.” (Click here to watch how President Bush feels about his legacy, 25 years later.)

In most aspects of civic and community life – education, housing, access to public venues, healthcare, even voting – the ADA has brought about unprecedented improvements in the quality of life for people with disabilities. Even labor force participation on the part of people with disabilities, which has stood stubbornly at roughly 20% since before the ADA until the present, is showing promising signs, as more employers begin to discover that the resilience, tenacity and problem-solving skills possessed by people with disabilities are strong workplace assets. Employment is seen by many as the last remaining obstacle to a good quality of life for people with disabilities, and is indeed a critical barrier. But as we know, in today’s economy, with its divisions between the haves and the have-nots, getting a job is not in and of itself a path out of poverty. Equally important to the path toward equality is ensuring the economic security and financial mobility for Americans with disabilities. The first job isn’t enough – it must be paired with meaningful steps toward upward economic mobility.

One of the few pieces of legislation to make it out of last year’s Congress was the Achieving a Better Life Experience, or ABLE Act, which lifts the savings limit for those living on Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Medicaid – the backbone of our country’s public support system for people with disabilities. Before the ABLE Act, people with disabilities were allowed to accumulate no more than $2,000 in savings without triggering a loss in benefits. That effectively trapped beneficiaries in long-term poverty and created disincentives to working longer hours and producing more income. Of course, the implicit assumption is that beneficiaries will never work and can expect no better life than a dependency on public benefits living in poverty. But access to the American dream should not be denied to people with disabilities any more than access to public accommodations. We need to make sure that people with disabilities are financially literate. That they understand the power of saving money and know how to do it. That they’re bankable; they have access to credit; they can save money to buy a home, finance their children’s education or just see a path to financial security. These commonplace privileges to which most Americans aspire, have long been denied to people with disabilities, by public policy and by law. This not only denies their dignity and financial mobility, but the income maintenance programs they’re forced to depend on as a replacement, like SSI and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), do not have sufficient funds to keep up with demand. We know that preventing discrimination is laudable but insufficient to guarantee these fundamental privileges to America’s 56 million people with disabilities. Public policies governing the longstanding programs that keep people with disabilities trapped in poverty need to be changed, to incentivize not only earnings, but savings. Banks need incentives to lend. Budgeting and financial literacy must be taught in special education classes. Twenty-five years after the passage of the ADA, Congress took a positive step forward with the ABLE Act that encourages savings without jeopardizing needed public benefits and promotes longer term planning for a better economic future.

Over 120 leaders in government and the disability and asset building communities will convene next week in Washington, D.C. to build a post ADA@25 action-oriented agenda that proposes improved strategies in policy and program design to promote financial capability and economic mobility for youth and working age adults with disabilities. The next generation of individuals with disabilities expects no less than full participation in the economic mainstream.

Essay by Carol Glazer, President, National Organization on Disability, a Heron investee via an Enterprise Capital Grant.

Twenty-two years ago, my first son Jacob was born with hydrocephalus, or water on the brain. Because of that and a series of medical complications early in Jacob’s life, he is both physically and intellectually disabled, and like most parents, I have been his advocate since his birth. For me this included, at a certain point in my career, making the decision to redirect my efforts from civil rights to disability rights, which meant living disability 24/7. It was not an easy decision, but it was the best one I could have made. It has meant working with wonderful colleagues to help turn the wheel of progress for people like Jacob, so they have the lifetime opportunities they deserve and have every ability to fulfill.

To be fair, this wheel was already turning before I joined in the push. In 1973, just over four decades ago, Congress passed the Rehab Act, which prevented discrimination in hiring by any business accepting federal dollars. It established for the first time, the principle that the exclusion and segregation of people with disabilities was discrimination, caused by prejudice and NOT the inevitable consequence of the physical limitations imposed by a disability.

Its message was that disability is a normal part of the human condition, something that any of us could experience at any time. And that all people, including those with disabilities deserved the right and the opportunity to participate in the workforce.

The Rehab Act marked a new way of thinking about disability—as a civil rights issue and not a medical one.

That same year, journalist Geraldo Rivera exposed the atrocities at Willowbrook State School for children with intellectual disabilities, which, like hundreds of institutions in that day, was the only place people with intellectual and mental health disabilities could live. By the time Rivera did his report, lack of dollars and an “out of sight out of mind” mentality had crept in, rendering such institutions no better than the prisons of the 1800’s: places where residents were chained to their beds without adequate food, clothing, education or activities to fill their days.

In 1975, children with disabilities gained the right to a free and appropriate special education through two federal laws—the Education for All Handicapped Children Act and its successor, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Until that time, virtually no child with disabilities was educated in the public schools—they would be educated at home for those who could afford it, in expensive private schools, or not at all. By 2010, the gap in high school graduation rates between students with and without disabilities had narrowed to virtually zero, from the high double digits in previous decades. IDEA, and the individualized care it established for special education students, has paved the way for children with disabilities to attend college. The recent passage of the ABLE Act allows families to build savings that can not only the costs associated with disability , but even more important, to achieve economic mobility, without losing eligibility for certain government benefits.

Now, through a combination of legislation, the demographics of an aging population and labor force, and huge changes in societal views and attitudes, the prospects for young people with disabilities, have never been better.

But our work is not yet done. The latest Harris Survey commissioned by the National Organization for Disability showed that only 20% of working aged Americans with disabilities is working. It’s a number that’s virtually unchanged since Harris started polling for NOD nearly thirty years ago.

Chronic unemployment has not been limited to the entry-level labor force. Even among college graduates with disabilities, only 40% are working, compared with more than 70% of all college graduates who are working full time. And of the two in five who are working:

• Nearly three quarters have two jobs.
• 40% are working less than full time.
• It took them twice as long as their non-disabled counterparts to find that job. 
• More than a third are earning less than $10,000 annually. That’s below the poverty line. 

With the odds at only two in five that the 2 million college students with disabilities will get a job, that means that’s 1,200,000 will not. That’s not only a terrible injustice; it’s a terrible waste of talent that could be enriching the American workforce. But I have hope that more changes are around the corner.

In the next year we’ll celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ADA extended broad protections for people with disabilities, and was as sweeping in its time as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, on which it was modeled.

But perhaps even more significant than the ADA for its potential to dramatically change the employment prospects for Americans with disabilities is a regulation promulgated by the Department of Labor just last year, affecting implementation of Section 503 of the Rehab Act.

The so-called 503 Rule Change requires all federal contractors—a group that employs nearly 25% of the nation’s workforce—to set a goal that 7% of their workforce be comprised of employees with disabilities. If these goals are met, that could mean 600,000 jobs for people with disabilities in the first year alone. The rule affects all job categories, including senior management.

The rule change implicitly understands that the tenacity and problem-solving skills that people with disabilities attain in navigating a world that wasn’t built for them are assets that can be trained towards productivity in the workforce. Companies that employ know how to attractand serve people with disabilities—both as employees and as customers—find numerous benefits. (In fact, opportunity toinvest in such companies and share in those benefits financially may be on the rise.) When we stop seeing people through the blinders of what they cannot do, and understand that people with disabilities are regular people with the full spectrum of talents and abilities, everybody wins.

My ultimate decision to enter the disability field came after seeing Rivera’s film again, and recognizing that, had my son Jacob been born just a couple of decades prior, he would have lived at Willowbrook. I joined the fight that many parents before me waged, to ensure Jacob the rights to live with his own family in his own home and community, to attend school, and to engage in meaningful activities as an adult. But this fight was never just for Jacob. It was for all of us, to progress toward the day when we all see and benefit from the value of all of our citizens.

Check out more from thought leaders in impact investing and philanthropy in our Influencer Series.

http://fbheron.org/2015/03/03/influencer-series-opportunity-at-work-for-the-differently-abled/

By: Carol Glazer, President, National Organization on Disability

As the leader of a national organization focused on employment for people with disabilities, I routinely have the privilege of visiting places that are doing some remarkable work to advance the issue. My travels of late took me to two notable college campuses: Edinboro University, just outside of Erie, PA, which has committed to excellence in accommodations for students with disabilities; and Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in upstate New York, which has dedicated itself to helping students with disabilities access jobs upon graduation, better ensuring their long-term economic security.

Frankly, America’s colleges and universities would do well to examine what RIT and other leaders in career services are doing right, because many, if not most, are getting it wrong. Nationally, students with disabilities take twice as long to secure a job after graduation. And of the 1.4 million college students with disabilities, about 60-percent of them can expect to not find a job when they graduate. Talk about a harsh dose of reality for young people who simply want to contribute.

When I talk with employers, which is just about every day, they tell me their inability to hire new graduates with disabilities is not due to a lack of qualified candidates, but rather a lack of access. We at the National Organization on Disability decided to take a closer look at this issue recently, which resulted in a white paper titled, Bridging the Employment Gap for Students with Disabilities.

Our research, along with guidance from partners such as Career Opportunities for Students with Disabilities and the National Association of Colleges and Employers, resulted in a series of recommendations that colleges and universities can take right now. Chief among them, and it’s one that RIT is executing quite well, is better coordination and communication between each school’s career services and disability offices, which respectively have access to “disability-friendly” employers and job seekers with disabilities. It may seem simple, yet so few schools get this right. At RIT, students engaged in this new model of information sharing report excellent results, with all early participants obtaining employment.

A closer look at this issue reveals that, while as a nation, we have become increasingly proficient at creating employment opportunities for people with disabilities in entry-level positions, employers have yet to build a robust talent pipeline for professional positions. This is a particularly pressing problem for employers looking for candidates with STEM backgrounds. One would think our institutions of higher education would be the ideal place to fill up that pipeline.

However, most professional-level jobs require not only a college degree, but frequently up to five years of work experience. This is a Catch 22 for the majority of all college-educated jobseekers, not just jobseekers with disabilities. But what we’re learning is that these experience requirements may be overly restrictive and are inadvertently screening out graduates with disabilities that could perform well in professional jobs with the right training.

This was underscored in a new study from the Association of American Colleges and Universities, in which employers evaluated students in skill areas such as being innovative, solving complex problems and working with others. Employers did not rank college grads highly in those key categories. Yet, talk with a person who has navigated the streets in a wheelchair for ten years or dealt with the medical establishment on a daily basis, and you’ll find a job candidate who excels in all three areas. Employers should reexamine requirements that might be unnecessarily restrictive – particularly federal contractors who must now seek to satisfy new federal disability employment targets – and potentially gain new sources of inventive and resourceful talent.

This summer, our nation will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the ADA. We have taken tremendous strides forward in improving access to employment for people with disabilities. But if we cannot solve the issue of how to connect talented young people with disabilities to meaningful employment, we will have not only wasted an historic opportunity to close this seemingly intractable employment gap, but we will yet again be wasting the talents of people who have much to contribute and deserve the opportunity to participate in the American Dream.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carol-glazer/cracks-in-talent-pipeline_b_6559184.html