http://bit.ly/2nbZyR9

Habitat for Humanity has announced that it will be implementing an aging-in-place program through the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing (JHSON), enabling more communities nationwide to improve the lives of low-income, older adults.

The Community Aging in Place—Advancing Better Living for Elders (CAPABLE) program was co-developed by JHSON endowed professor for health equity and social justice Sarah L. Szanton to support aging-in-place services for low-income older adults. JHSON and Habitat for Humanity will be working together to expand Habitat’s current work improving homes to include collaborating with health professionals to address the home’s usability, safety, and the health of its owner.

Szanton, PhD, ANP, FAAN, tells Newswise.com, “This will help bring even more services to low-income, older adults, who often have reduced access to primary care and little financial means to provide necessary updates that can make their homes safer. It will be of great benefit to Habitat’s vision for housing and stability for individuals and families and another opportunity to expand CAPABLE’s reach.”

JHSON and Habitat for Humanity have selected six cities to measure improvement and analyze results of the implementation. CAPABLE is currently used in 22 cities in 11 states and Australia. The program is a research-based intervention that helps increase strength, mobility, and safety of older adults through home visits from a nurse, occupational therapist, and handyman. Patients in the program set their own functional goals while the CAPABLE program helps to improve their living environment, helping to decrease disability and depression, and improve self-care among participants.

To learn more about Johns Hopkins School of Nursing’s partnership with Habitat for Humanity to bring the CAPABLE program to more older adults in new cities, visit here.

http://bit.ly/2LGNFNX

A 2017 report by the McKinsey Global Institute documented that companies with a “true long-term mindset” perform better on financial indicators than peer organizations with a more short-term focus. Companies such as Ford and Verizon have reinvigorated themselves by forestalling short-term worries to concentrate on long-term goals. In light of these lessons from the business world, those of us who care for children find our health care system’s myopic focus on short-term cost savings concerning. Health care systems focussignificant resources on programs for the top 5 percent of health care spenders (who are overwhelmingly adults with chronic conditions), while overlooking the needs of children. This spending pattern may cut costs quickly, but it ignores the fact that building the healthy adults of tomorrow requires investing in children (particularly young children) today. We advocate that Medicaid in all states include a quality metric related to school success—such as school readiness—thereby incentivizing health systems to collaborate with educational partners to promote population-based child well-being.

The First 1,000 Days—An Important Time To Promote Lifelong Health

With regard to child health, the US consistently ranks below other wealthy nations. Since the 1980s, the child mortality rate in the US has exceeded those of 19 developed nations—including Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom—despite higher per capita health spending. Children in the US also suffer from chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes at higher rates than children living in most other highly developed nations.

Advances in neuroscience indicate that early childhood experiences influence both the foundational architecture and long-term functioning of the brain. A child’s experience with the physical, social, and emotional milieu is embedded biologically and influences health, behavior, and learning across the lifespan. Specifically, protective early experiences promote positive coping skills and good health, whereas insecure experiences can lead to maladaptive coping skills and poor health. Decades of research demonstrate that children deprived of a strong developmental foundation are more likely to experience negative health outcomes in adolescence (for example, pregnancy and substance abuse) and in adulthood (for example, obesity, coronary artery disease, and depression). Data concurrently demonstrate our ability to improve these outcomes for vulnerable children and to generate benefits to society that far exceed program costs. Nobel Laureate economist James Heckman documents that improving the experiences and environments of children ages 0–5 years provides a return on investment of up to 13 percent—translating to billions of dollars in net benefit to society. 

Marketed as inspiration porn, but many of the films are good in themselves....

http://bit.ly/2Linmx6

The only distributor of films exclusively featuring people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Sproutflix films have been used in agencies, universities and libraries to educate, enlighten and entertain.

http://bit.ly/2IYspAZ

After a year and a half hiatus and a lot of worried customers, the adaptive clothing line IZ Adaptive, founded by Canadian designer Izzy Camilleri, will be relaunching in September.

IZ Adaptive, first launched in 2009, built a devoted following among wheelchair users by offering clothing that was both fashionable and designed to be easy to put on and fit right while seated. Though existing customers loved the clothes, the brand had issues with marketing and scaling up its efforts, according to Camilleri.

“In the adaptive world, you end up selling directly to the consumer, so it makes scale very difficult,” says Camilleri. When IZ Adaptive started, she says, “there were absolutely no wholesale opportunities for me. I tried, but for retailers, it was just a category that nobody had ever heard of.”

Instead of wholesaling its clothes to retail chains, the business worked on slowly adding to its customer base, one by one. It built a loyal following, but the business model was costly and difficult to sustain. Camilleri says that when IZ Adaptive shut its doors in 2016, it was never supposed to be permanent, but rather a break to remodel the business for long term sustainability. “We really needed to stop and restructure and take a few steps back … we needed to take it to the next level, and we couldn’t do that in the model we were in,” she says. “Now with the relaunch, I’m able to use everything we learned from before, and so I have a really fantastic starting point.”

And so it begins....

https://cnb.cx/2Kyvqtk

• Amazon says it's acquiring online pharmacy PillPack in a deal that could disrupt the U.S. drugstore business.
• PillPack packages, organizes and delivers drugs. It sends consumers packages with the specific number of medications they're supposed to take at specific times

The move is the strongest indication yet of Amazon's intent to push further into the health-care industry. It threatens to remove one of the few distinguishing factors pharmacy chains have relied on to fend off Amazon, the sale of prescription drugs. Retailers like Walgreens Boots Alliance, CVS Health and Rite Aid have seen their so-called front of store sales threatened as shoppers increasingly buy household staples online or from convenience stores.

PillPack, which organizes and delivers packages of medications for consumers, is licensed to ship prescriptions in 49 states, according to its website.

"Yes, it's a declaration of intent from Amazon," Walgreens Boots Alliance CEO Stefano Pessina acknowledged to analysts in a planned call to discuss its quarterly earnings, according to an initial transcript from FactSet. "[But] the pharmacy world is much more complex than the delivery of a certain [pills or] packages."

http://bit.ly/2KlWwnA

Keller’s moving, persuasive writing is eloquent and uncompromising and should be taught alongside that of other great American rhetoricians. Consider, for example, the passage below from a letter she wrote in 1916 to Oswald Villard, then Vice-President of the NAACP:

Ashamed in my very soul I behold in my own beloved south-land the tears of those who are oppressed, those who must bring up their sons and daughters in bondage to be servants, because others have their fields and vineyards, and on the side of the oppressor is power. I feel with those suffering, toiling millions, I am thwarted with them. Every attempt to keep them down and crush their spirit is a betrayal of my faith that good is stronger than evil, and light stronger than darkness…. My spirit groans with all the deaf and blind of the world, I feel their chains chafing my limbs. I am disenfranchised with every wage-slave. I am overthrown, hurt, oppressed, beaten to the earth by the strong, ruthless ones who have taken away their inheritance. The wrongs of the poor endure ring fiercely in my soul, and I shall never rest until they are lifted into the light, and given their fair share in the blessings of life that God meant for us all alike.

It is difficult to choose any one passage from the letter because the whole is written with such expressive feeling. This is but one document among many hundreds in the new Helen Keller archive at the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), which has digitized letters, essays, speeches, photographs, and much more from Keller’s long, tireless career as a writer and public speaker. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the archive includes over 250,000 digital images of her work from the late 19th century to well into the 20th. There are many films of Keller, photos like that of her and her dog Sieglinde at the top, a collection of her correspondence with Mark Twain, and much more.

http://bit.ly/2s9lCxT

oday’s episode features a conversation with two disabled actors working in New York City: Shannon Devido and Ryan Haddad. Both are triple threats– actors, writers, and performers. You’ll hear them talk about why they love acting and how they broke into the entertainment industry. We also discuss disability representation in media and why actually disabled actors should play disabled characters.

Transcript

[Google doc]     [PDF]

I heard "end of life as we know it"....

https://ti.me/2rPOpse

An audiologist has an explanation for why everyone on the internet can’t stop asking: “Yanny” or “Laurel”?

“This all comes down to the brain,” says Dr. Kevin Franck, director of audiology at Massachusetts Eye and Ear. “The fact that brains go in one way and some brains go in the other means that we’re all just wired a bit differently based on our experiences.”

The viral audio clip — which some listeners interpret as a deep male voice saying, “Yanny,” and others hear as a higher-pitched voiced saying, “Laurel” — popped up on Reddit this week and quickly plunged the internet into fierce debate, the likes of which have not been since 2015’s furor over “the Dress.”

Franck explains that the Yanny vs. Laurel debate likely hits on a number of cognitive processes that the brain uses to assign meaning to sound, though he stresses that he doesn’t know exactly how the file was made. (The New York Times reports that the whole thing can be traced back to an 18-year-old in Georgia who got the clip on Vocabulary.com.)

http://bit.ly/2GunRRM

In a world of rapidly advancing technology it’s crucial to ensure companies and organizations are doing their best to make digital developments accessible to everyone.

While browsing the internet, catching up on social media, or texting on mobile devices might seem like second nature to some, accessibility-related barriers prevent millions of people with disabilities from easily using basic forms of technology and, in some cases, even discourage them from going online.

In 2012, Global Accessibility Awareness Day was launched to help highlight the need for increased digital accessibility.

In recent years we've seen some amazing action taken — from the creation of virtual marches, which give those with physical disabilities a place to protest online, to more advanced social media tools, like Facebook's face recognition and automatic alt-text tools, which help blind users and people with low vision better identify posts and people in photographs. But there's still a lot of room for improvement when it comes to disability inclusion.

Approximately 10 percent of the world’s population have a disability, according to the United Nations, which means around 650 million people are faced with daily challenges when using digital devices. Here's everything you need to know about the yearly GAAD celebration.

What is Global Accessibility Awareness Day?

The Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) is a day dedicated to celebrating existing digital accessibility efforts, and also fostering conversations on the importance of inclusion to inspire further action amongst designers, developers, and tech leaders.

GAAD, celebrated on May 17 this year, is held annually on the third Thursday of May. 2018 will mark the seventh year it's being observed worldwide.

What inspired this globally recognized day?

This may come as a surprise, but Global Accessibility Awareness Day was inspired by a single blog post written by Los Angeles-based web developer, Joe Devon, back in 2011.

The post, titled "CHALLENGE: Accessibility know-how needs to go mainstream with developers. NOW," was a bold call to action in which Devon brought attention to the lack of readily available information about online accessibility.

http://bit.ly/2I5R5YK

Voices is a free and open journal collecting together voices and opinions of people with a disability and those that support them.
A free and open journal collecting together voices and opinions of people with a disability and those that support them.

Welcome to the first edition of “Voices” a free and open collection of thoughts and opinions from across the world as written by people with a disability and those that support them. The idea of the magazine or journal was to provide a platform where the writings of the authors could be shared and to provide a channel to an audience who might never find the individual blogs and features reproduced. It offers a showcase of the rich diversity of thought and emotion amongst the community to broaden understanding and recognize the breadth of opinions expressed.

The idea behind “Voices” evolved from a series of focus groups and interviews held with people with a disability during the autumn and winter of 2017.  The focus groups were undertaken across a series of projects around technology and people with a disability. From those events the need for greater information and the sharing of experience, challenges and responses emerged. “Voices” by drawing together diverse perspectives is one response to this.

In future issues we will be seeking to broaden still further the voices published and shared within the journal, inviting perspectives from people with a disability from across the world.