Declaration for Independence

A Call to Transform Health and Long Term Services for Seniors and People with Disabilities



What We’re Reading: Feb. 22, 2016

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The Columbus Dispatch: Suicides in nursing homes hard to track, prevent Suicides among older adults remain disturbingly high despite improved screening and treatment for depression. And although there is growing awareness about suicide, the one area in which it is less documented, not very well understood and much more hidden is in nursing homes, advocates [...]

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What We’re Reading: Feb. 15, 2016

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The Atlantic: A First-Aid Class for Mental Health Most people know how to help someone with a cut or a scrape. But what about a panic attack? — Meagan Morris (Feb. 12) Maclean's: How universities are helping students with ‘invisible’ disabilities Schools are racing to figure out how to use accommodations to handle the wave [...]

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What We’re Reading: Feb. 8, 2016

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The Baltimore Sun: Police training expands for encounters with people who have developmental disabilities The 11 recruits will be the first police class in Howard County to take the four-hour training on intellectual and developmental disabilities after it became a requirement for recruits across Maryland. — Tim Prudente (Jan. 17) The Guardian: Poor housing is [...]

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What We’re Reading: Feb. 1, 2016

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Governing Magazine: Can Technology Help Prevent Drug Overdoses? The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) has begun using analytics – basically software algorithms – to sift through sets of data to spot patterns and to devise an early warning system about hotspots in the state where possible overdoses and deaths might occur. Using data in [...]

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What We’re Reading: Jan. 25, 2016

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The Atlantic: By 2050, There Could Be as Many as 25 Million Poor, Elderly Americans A back-of-the-envelope estimate suggests that the number of elderly Americans in poverty will increase substantially in the coming decades. In 2010, 46.6 million Americans were over 65.  Using the OECD’s measure of impoverishment, which takes into account food insecurity and [...]

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What We’re Reading: Jan. 11, 2016

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NPR: Anatomy of Addiction—How Heroin and Opioids Hijack the Brain They trigger the release of dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter that causes intense pleasure in parts of the brain that include the limbic system, according to Savage. It links brain areas that control and regulate emotions such as the pleasures of eating, drinking and sex. [...]

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What We’re Reading: Jan. 4, 2016

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The Huffington Post: If Uber Kills Cabs, Cities Must Ensure Accessible Vehicles Live Now there's a figure to back them up: According to a recent report, the number of wheelchair-accessible vehicles for hire in San Francisco fell significantly in the past few years -- all while services like Uber and Lyft were rapidly expanding in [...]

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New House rule creates uncertainty for Social Security Disability Insurance Trust Fund

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Posted Jan. 13, 2015 | Last week, the House of Representatives adopted a sweeping rules package for the 114th Congress including a provision that would stop House lawmakers  from transferring money from Social Security’s Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund to the program’s Disability Insurance (DI) Trust Fund unless lawmakers took steps to “improve the actuarial [...]

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NCD Releases 2014 Report on the Status of People with Disabilities in the U.S.

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Posted Nov. 5, 2014 | Since its inception, the National Council on Disability (NCD) has reported on the status of people with disabilities in the United States of America. The 2014 review of National Disability Policy: A Progress Report continues that tradition, providing policymakers, advocates and other stakeholders with an overview of the progress the United States [...]

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Justice Department Releases Technical Assistance on Rights of Voters with Disabilities

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Posted Oct. 23, 2014 | The Department of Justice (DOJ) has published two new Technical Assistance (TA) documents regarding the rights of voters with disabilities: The Americans with Disabilities Act and Other Federal Laws Protecting the Rights of Voters with Disabilities and Solutions for Five Common Access Problems at Polling Places. Laws covered in the DOJ TA documents [...]

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