How can a small community prevent secondary conditions such as isolation and lack of opportunity for people with disabilities? For Jefferson County, the rural home of 27,000 people on Washington State's Olympic Peninsula, the answer is an evolving process. In 1999 the Jefferson County Health Department responded to an initiative of the Washington State Department of Health, funded by the state-level disability prevention program of the CDC's Office on Disability and Health, to prevent secondary conditions among people with disabilities. The state Department of Health partnered with the University of Washington to support the Jefferson County initiative and another in Spokane County.
The Jefferson Disability Awareness, Surveillance and Health Promotion (DASH) project formed an Advisory Board of people with disabilities, representatives from local government and service agencies. This presentation will describe its subsequent steps, emphasizing how the general sequence of activities (identifying areas for change, choosing intervention objectives, increasing visibility for disability) was tailored to local conditions. The main intervention draws on the increasing elderly population and the importance of tourism for the county by developing a 'certification' process to identify and publicize accessible "Disability-Friendly" stores and restaurants. The process has not been easy. Budget cuts led the County Health Department to eliminate the project coordinator's job, so the project moved to another agency. Resources and technical assistance are scarce in a rural area. Nonetheless, DASH continues to draw on strengths of this community to prevent secondary conditions in ways tailored to the local environment.
Learning Objectives: --understand how to adapt community development methods to prevention of secondary conditions
Keywords: Disability,
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.