An amazing event happened the week before last in UAB’s Wellness, Health and Research Facility, WHARF. A young lady by the name of Harper Nichols, a recent graduate of UAB, transformed the building into a living, breathing culture of disability art.

Dr. Gitendra Uswatte is collaborating with his long-time colleagues Dr. Edward Taub and Dr. Karlene Ball, university professors, on treating the cognitive effects of long-haul COVID with a revolutionary intervention.

Movement to Music (M2M) is a rhythmic based exercise program delivered through Zoom in which participants can actively engage with instructors and other participants in the convenience of their own home.

Dr. Yumi Kim was on track to go into the real world with a business degree in hand, but a fall from the eighth floor of an apartment building set her on a path of recovery and a new career.

Dr. Keith McGregor, CEDHARS scientist and director of research in the School of Health Professions, had a “record scratch” moment when talking with other UAB researchers about interventions, or lack thereof, for neuroCOVID. So, they decided to act.

Personal life events have set a CEDHARS associate scientist down a path of fulfilling research, and now the Ph.D. student will continue her work with the aid of a prestigious fellowship at the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research.

In an editorial that appeared in The New York Times last week, Dr. Lisa Iezzoni, a researcher and physician from Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital, conducted a set of focus groups among her peer physicians to examine their attitudes toward treating people with disabilities. Disappointingly, she concluded that the medical profession continues to be largely discriminatory in providing healthcare for people with disabilities. While I have been an active reader of Dr. Iezzoni’s research for the last two decades and have heard many times before that physicians aren’t treating patients with disabilities in the same way as patients without disabilities, the findings from this new study were even more dramatic and shocking than her previous reports. Here is a quote that summarizes the study findings:

Dr. Anjali Forber-Pratt, director of the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research had a successful visit to UAB’s campus last week, meeting with various NIDILRR grantee stakeholders as well as giving a seminar on disability identity.

Each morning after doing a few chores, I open two newspapers on my computer – the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).  The Times recognized the importance of covering stories on people with disabilities several years ago and runs a regular column on disability that appears every few weeks.  The series led to the book About Us, which is a terrific collection of personal stories written by people with disabilities.

The area of research in garnering the power of arts in health is growing, and a CEDHARS faculty member is bringing his expertise in occupational therapy to the field.

When we conflate disability and health status, our efforts to promote a healthy life for all are undermined.

As reported in a new systematic review by Sally Lindsay and Kristina Fuentes at the University of Toronto, ableist attitudes and resistance are stigmatizing disabilities, stifling faculty and staff with a disability from advocating for themselves, and preventing critical accommodations and policies for faculty and staff with a disability from being created and widely implemented.

Although dopaminergic therapy, particularly the medication levodopa, can be quite effective for treating Parkinson’s Disease, the efficacy can widely vary from person to person. But a NORC grant awarded to a fellow in The UAB/Lakeshore Research Collaborative is looking to shrink that gap.

Last week, The New York Times printed an excellent editorial by M. Leona Godin, a nationally known scholar and author who is blind. Ms. Godin recalls an incident where she met up with two friends who are also blind in her hometown of San Francisco. One of the women, Haben Girma, is the only deaf-blind graduate of Harvard Law School. Communicating with Ms. Girma involves typing into her wireless keyboard so that she can read the words on her Braille display and respond verbally. Since Ms. Godin was not used to communicating this way, she was making numerous grammatical errors. In an expression of frustration, she commented, “I feel so dumb,” which was met by a terse reply from the other person, Caitlin Hernandez, “That’s ableist.”

This phenomenological dissertation explored how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted college students and postdoctoral fellows who have a disability or chronic health condition.

It’s not black and white, and it shouldn’t be red or blue, either.

Therapists at the UAB Taub Training Clinic had developed and delivered a revolutionary intervention for patients recovering from stroke known as constraint induced therapy until it was forced to close in 2020 for financial burden due to poor insurance reimbursement and time required by therapists.

The World Games 2022, an international multi-sport event organized with the support of the International Olympic Committee, will hold its 11th edition in Birmingham from July 7-17, 2022. And thanks to the Disability Inclusion Program, this will be the first edition of TWG – or any international multi-sport event – to include an adaptive sport.

In a previous editorial I commented on Lindsay Bowe’s powerful expression in the UAB Graduate School “Say It In 6” competition with her insightful words: "Disabled and equally capable as before."

The UAB Center for Exercise Medicine, the Nutrition Obesity Research Center and the Center for Engagement in Disability Health and Rehabilitation Sciences are pleased to jointly host the “Precision-The Genes and Beyond” Research Symposium.