pages: CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities/2018-05-09.pdf, 6
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CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities | 2018-05-09 | 6 | COMMISSION ON DISABILITY MEETING MUTES OF Wednesday May 9, 2018 6:30 p.m. here's a question mark. What does climate change have to do with disability? You might start to get a gist of it, but I'll give a quick run down. First of all, people with disabilities need support, and these are different types of supports for health and independence. This can be medical support, such as quality healthcare, medical equipment. I got this wheelchair on Friday. It's awesome. Different supplies, medical supplies being shipped through the port of Oakland, perhaps which again, is at sea level. Medication and a quality healthcare system. Life quality resources, such as personal care attendants, or just community support. Accessible housing. Accessible and public and affordable transportation that meets people's needs and personal situations. And then, jobs with the necessary accommodations and the necessary civil rights protections, to keep people employed and economically safe. Alex Ghenis: It does provide funding and stability, or require funding and stability. So certainly social services is something that is constantly in danger and needs our overall communal and societal support. Community and family support is also something important there, and it takes time and effort to develop. It's vulnerable. And I think this hits at all levels. We're seeing, oh gosh, I think it was Louisiana or another state recently, where they are just kicking tens of thousands of people off of Medicaid, and they're getting kicked out of long-term care facilities, and nobody knows where they're going. It takes a lot of time and effort to build these things up, but they can be fragile. On the flip side, even at the social network, I remember when I was in college, I lived in a co-op with 56 other people, which was a fantastic community. And then I graduated and I moved into an apartment with one roommate. And it was like, "Okay, I have to rebuild my whole social network or emotional and sometimes logistical well-being." So it's something that we all need to focus on and recognize as vulnerable. Alex Ghenis: Something to be concerned about, climate change does lead to more disability. There is a problem is that most climate change reports simply quantify disability into what they call, "Disability Adjusted Life Years' which says, "If you're 100% disabled and dead, and you're that way for one year, then that's one disability adjusted life year. If we think that your disability is half of death then, and you have that for one year because of some public health impact, then that's half a disability adjusted life year.' We don't like this format obviously, because it does not recognize the dynamism and the complex needs of people with disabilities, but it shows that to a certain extent, climate change will have health impacts on people, and we need to move beyond that public health measure to recognize that this is a social issue as well. Alex Ghenis: Some of the issues are storm-related injuries that could happen here, things such as malnutrition, the drought in California, if it raises food prices, if we start to see long-term droughts and we have people with disabilities that are economically disadvantaged, then that might actually affect their health. Invasive diseases, we haven't seen that so much here, but it certainly is a concern potentially into the future. At the broader scale, climate-related conflict, more injuries, and then things such as the exacerbation of disability through, say, more air pollution from forest fires affecting people with asthma that can cause long-term lung damage. Next. So some of the major impacts, if we look at the And actually, the framework that I like to use for disability, and I'm going to take a quick step back here is And you mentioned you all talked about intersectionality, right? Alex Ghenis: Disability is diverse, complex, and intersectional. So is climate change. We, I think, 05/30/18 Page 6 of 32 | CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities/2018-05-09.pdf |