Centering Disability in the Public Health Agenda

Judy Heumann is a lifelong advocate for the rights of disabled people. She has been instrumental in the development and implementation of legislation, such as Section 504, the Individuals with Education Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act, and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Her memoir,“Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist,” co-authored by Kristen Joiner, was published in 2020. She is also featured in the Oscar-nominated documentary, Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution, directed by James LeBrecht and Nicole Newnham. Judy produces a podcast called The Heumann Perspective, which features a variety of members from the disability community.

Judy serves on a number of non-profit boards, including the American Association of People with Disabilities, the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, Humanity and Inclusion, Human Rights Watch, United States International Council on Disability, and Save the Children. She has 20 years of non-profit experience working with various disability organizations, including being a founding member of the a founding member of the Berkeley Center for Independent Living. Prior to starting the Judith Heumann LLC, she served in the Clinton Administration and Obama administrations.

Eric Rubenstein, PhD, ScM is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health. His work is focused on improving the lives of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), including Down syndrome (DS) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Epidemiology, the science of public health, is the crucial tool that can help reach the ultimate goal of improving health and well-being for the population with IDD. That work cannot be done without input and collaboration from the IDD community, which motivates and drives the work to be impactful and translatable.

Dr. Rubenstein’s work covers issues that impact health and well-being across the life course for people with IDD. He is currently the PI of a National Institute for Child Health and Human Development study of pregnancy in women with IDD. He has extensive work examining phenotype and service type in children on the autism spectrum. Dr. Rubenstein uses Medicaid data to examine service use and health outcomes for people with IDD who are often served by the public insurance system.

Reyma McCoy Hyten, the first Black woman to ever serve as the US Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner for the Administration on Disabilities, is now devoting her full time and attention to supporting the creation of just and verdant communities for all in the US- and beyond. She was an Antibigotry Convening Fellow with the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University and is a former recipient of the AT&T Humanity of Connection award.  Additionally, her 2018 run for office was endorsed by the Working Families Party. Her work has been featured in Vice, TIME , The Guardian, and USA Today. After a twenty year career as a helping professional, her vocation has shifted from serving marginalized people to addressing, through her signature approach to identifying and confronting the root causes of oppression, how systems create marginalization in the first place.

Bonnielin Swenor is an epidemiologist and associate professor at The Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, School of Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is the founder and director of the Johns Hopkins Disability Health Research Center, which aims to shift the paradigm from ‘living with a disability’ to ‘thriving with a disability’ through research, education, and policy.

Dr. Swenor’s research is motivated by her experience with disability as she has low vision. Her work uses a ‘disability data justice’ approach to advancing health equity for people with disabilities by (1) developing methods to identify and reduce inequities impacting people with disabilities; and (2) promoting inclusion and empowerment of the disability community in this work. This work has focused on healthcare, housing, food access, transportation, and education inequities that impact people with disabilities.

Dr. Swenor is the founder of multiple research consortiums connecting communities and fostering disability inclusion, including the Disability Health Equity Research Network (DHERN) and the International Network of Researchers with Vision Impairment and their Allies (INOVA). She is a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) Forum on Aging, Disability, and Independence, cochairs the Subgroup on Individuals with Disabilities within the Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and is a member of the Health Equity Workgroup within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ACD. She also co-hosts the Included podcast, highlighting research that challenges stereotypes and elevates the inequities that people with disabilities face.

Eric Garcia is the senior Washington correspondent for The Independent. He is also a columnist for MSNBC. He is the author of the book We’re Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation and autistic himself. Previously, he was an assistant editor at the Washington Post’s Outlook section and an associate editor at The Hill and a correspondent for National Journal, MarketWatch and Roll Call. He has also written for the Daily Beast, the NewRepublic, and Salon.com. Garcia is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Washington, D.C.