Projects

Pacific ADA Center

The Pacific ADA Center builds partnerships between the disability and business communities and promotes full and unrestricted participation in society for persons with disabilities through education and technical assistance.

The Pacific ADA Center is one of ten Regional centers nationally that have been set up to provide information and referral, training, consultation, and technical assistance to the business, state and local government, and disability communities about their responsibilities and rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act. In 2006, the Center received funding to conduct research. Currently two research projects are underway: Employment Strategies for People with Disabilities and Understanding Employer Disability Practices.

The Pacific ADA Center includes over 60 consultants, a small staff and subcontracts with more than 38 entities region wide. Nationally, the Center participates in nationwide training projects and the development of materials for broad base distribution. Pacific ADA Center works directly with the Departments of Justice, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Department of Transportation, and the Federal Communications Commission to implement the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The Pacific ADA Center developed and maintains a collaborative project at Accessible Tech. The mission of this project is to promote full and unrestricted participation in business and society by persons with disabilities through the use of electronic information technology that is universally accessible.

Center for Personal Assistance Services

By promoting research, training, technical assistance and dissemination about personal assistance services, the Center for Personal Assistance Services mission is to ensure that people with self-care limitations can find information that will help them live independently. The goal of the PAS Center is to improve the access, quality, and costs of PAS for people with inactivities of daily living difficulties to live independently, comfortably and safely in the community and to participate in society, including employment.

The Center on Disability is conducting the dissemination for this research and training center including, website development and maintenance, webinar production and newsletter production. The Center on Disability is also conducting research into emergency preparedness and PAS.

Family Center on Technology and Disability

The Center on Disability is conducting annual formative reviews of the activities of the federally funded Family Center on Technology and Disability (FCTD). The FCTD is a resource designed to support organizations and programs that work with families of children and youth with disabilities. The FCTD offers a range of information and services on the subject of assistive and instructional technologies, including a web site (www.fctd.info) with assistive/instructional technology resources of interest to families of children with disabilities, monthly newsletters, online discussions moderated by nationally recognized experts, a database of FCTD members which is comprised of more than 3,000 disability organizations, a resource review database with hundreds of reviews of AT resources, Family Information Guides, and other resources.

Assessing the Community Guide

The Guide to Community Preventative Services (Community Guide) is a resource for evidence-based Task Force recommendations and findings about what works to improve public health. It is based on scientific systematic reviews to provide evidence-based decision making in community health programs. The Community Guide provides approaches and information in Obesity, Nutrition, Physical Activity, Social Environment, Tobacco, Alcohol, Violence, Cancer, Oral Health, Vaccines, Diabetes, Mental Health, HIV/STIs/Pregnancy, Adolescent Health, and Motor Vehicle.

Funded by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the purpose of this project is to assess the generalizability of recommended interventions in the Guide to Community Preventive Services to the population with disability. The intent is to maximize the capacity of states and communities to implement effective prevention and health promotion programs for people with disabilities.

The project, carried out by the Center on Disability at the Public Health Institute, will review disability literature for the 15 topic areas, as well as conduct key informant interviews with disability researchers, and hold focus groups of individuals with disabilities to gather input regarding the recommendations.