DISABILITY POLICY CONSORTIUM

Our core mission is advocating for the civil rights of people with disabilities. Across societal domains from housing, to employment, to family law, to criminal justice, and especially healthcare, people with disabilities are subject to rampant and sometimes life-threatening discrimination. At DPC, we use grassroots organizing, and policy development to fight back against this discrimination and to protect and expand civil rights protections for our community. At present, we are working to pass legislation that would ensure disabled parents do not have their children taken away because of an ableist presumption that their disabilities make them unfit parents. We also led the successful campaign to overturn Massachusetts' Crisis Standards of Care, which would have deprioritized people with disabilities for COVID-19 treatment, and have now written and are working to pass legislation that would protect people with disabilities from discrimination throughout the healthcare system

My Ombudsman works with MassHealth (Massachusetts Medicaid) Enrollees, especially those with disabilities, and their healthcare plans to resolve disputes, help enrollees respond to denials of care, and ensure that they get the care they need to be healthy and independent. This program has helped thousands of low-income people with disabilities, and is available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Haitian Creole, and American Sign Language (ASL). Our staff hold outreach events and office hours with partner organizations that serve low-income populations across the state, and can provide support by phone, email, video call, or in person.

DPC is one of the only independent organizations run by people with disabilities that conducts research. Historically, people with disabilities have been the objects of research, sometimes even without our consent. Instead, at DPC our research is led *by* people with disabilities, and we use Community-Based Participatory Action Research methods to ensure that people in the communities we are doing research in are deeply involved in the work at every stage. We have worked with partners including Academy Health, Mathematica, Brandeis University, the MGH Mongan Institute for Health Policy, and more, on issues ranging from the future of healthcare for people with disabilities to the impact of opiates and opiate policy on our community. In 2022, we were selected as an inaugural Community Support for Health Equity grantee by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and will be conducting a three year study on barriers to home based care for disabled BIPOC in Springfield, MA.