Health and Disability Learning Community
Kick-off Conference Call
Notes
March 8, 2011
Meeting Objectives:
1. Learn about work being done by learning community peers focusing on emergency planning and
preparedness activities for and with people with disabilities.
2. Engage in a discussion related to emergency planning and preparedness for people with
disabilities.
3. Provide input to NACCHO on how to improve the learning community.
Item
Discussion
Action
Item
Discussion
Welcome, Jennifer Li and Sarah Yates, NACCHO
 Welcome and introductions
 Review meeting agenda/objectives
 Check for agreement
Highlights/Key Points:
 None
Challenges/Areas of Concern: None
Recommendations and Next Steps/Action Items: None
None
Project Updates, All
 Provide updates on your work related to emergency planning and preparedness for
people with disabilities
 Highlight any tools or resources that might be of interest to other learning community
members
Highlights/Key Points:
 Cheryl Bushnell, Randolph, MA: Has an $11,000 contract with the Massachusetts
Emergency Management Agency to work on sheltering in the middle school and
providing necessary utilities such as additional refrigeration, specialized cots, voice
amplifiers, equipment to check oxygen levels and glucometers. The planning has helped
to build important relationships within the community and the schools. Also
implemented a door to door team type of approach for people who have disabilities but
cannot evacuate in an emergency.
 Anna McEnery, Jefferson County, WA:
o Does emergency preparedness classes for vulnerable adults, and people with
disabilities, class includes free grab and go bags that contain emergency kits.
Have distributed 150 of these bags to low income people. Classes include
sheltering in place, illness at home, Red Cross shelters, food, first aid, readiness,
earthquake preparedness, tsunami and flood prep. Also have information about
HAM radio and someone from mental health that talks about taking care of
people’s emotions after a disaster. Other classes cover pet care and life safety
trailer. During classes safety plan forms are handed out.
o A challenge they are facing is finding people with disabilities in the community to
attend the classes.
o Rely on volunteers in the community for teaching the classes, and support from
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local agencies for money and for supplies such as the grab bags.
o Had a panel of people with disabilities that presented to first responders,
emergency personal and agencies who deal with emergency preparedness to
talk about special needs and connection with emergency preparedness.
o Handed out pamphlets to first responders with tips on how to deal with seniors,
people with mobility impairments, people with autism, people who are deaf and
hard of hearing, service animals, blind or visually impaired, cognitive disabilities,
people with mental illness, and chemical sensitive’s. You can get the pamphlet
from the University of New Mexico.
o Where do you teach the classes?
 At a low income apartment complex, at an assisted living facility, and
also at the public health department. Go where the need is the greatest
and where the most interest is. However, it’s easiest to teach on your
home ground.
Pat Draper, Kent County, MI:
o Working with regional Red Cross through their disaster mental health and
human services committee to provide a think tank to work through the
functional needs support services project through sheltering.
o Have some agencies and some people with mobility or sensory disabilities
working with the Red Cross planners.
o Meet regularly with their disabilities advocate agency and recently brought the
Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT) director and Red Cross to the
table to talk about local and regional projects to promote CERT in the disability
community.
o Working with a local health care coalition, specifically with their long term care
workgroup, to address some issues that came up in a survey that was given out.
From these surveys discovered that many of their long term care facilities did
not know who their emergency mangers were or who emergency preparedness
coordinator at their LHD was. Teaming up at the LHD to help address those gaps
and make sure they know who their emergency coordinator and mangers are
and also to address the gaps in evacuation planning.
o Working with the homeland security grant at the regional level to send some
awareness materials and distributing NOA weather radios that are accessible to
people with sensory disabilities to the 13 counties region. This will allow them to
hear the weather alerts and also receive the emergency system alerts.
o Going to distribute a number of visual language translators to the first
responders as well as the new FIMA DVDs.
o Distributing responder awareness videos that have information on how to
approach people with disabilities when responding to them.
o Expanding full community planning consortiums in all the counties that are in
the region.
Have any members had to deal with individuals that live in residential group homes in
the community that have people with cognitive or physical limitations as occupants?
o Anna: People with cognitive disabilities have attended Jefferson County classes,
and some have their support staff with them to be able to go over the material
after the class with them and to also include it in some trainings or lessons they
may have in their residential area.
o Cheryl: has a group of organizations that meet periodically. Some of these
Action
agencies that contracted the state for the group homes have participated at
meetings or through e mails. But the way Cheryl treats the group homes is that
she expects them to come and participate as the general public would. In terms
of education, in MA, the department of developmental disabilities works with
their contract providers on emergency preparedness and so does the
department of mental health. Cheryl is concerned about people who are living in
their own home or apartment that are not affiliated with an agency, because the
agency doesn’t take care of all people like many think they do. There’s been a lot
of work done in MA through the state agencies to work within the group homes,
but working at the local level she’s not sure they’ve achieved what they need to
achieve. She plans for people that have physical disabilities and/or cognitive
disabilities to accommodate in the general shelter with the thought that if
people need something more they’ll accommodate them as it’s identified and
addressed.
o Pat: working with the agencies can be very helpful. In Kent County they have a
large agency that has quite a few group homes and people with developmental
disabilities. They encourage the safety officer to have mutual aide agreements
either internally or externally.
o Cheryl: brought up the fact that communication within the community is vital
for people with disabilities. A system in place needs to be set up so that they can
get the information easily. She would also like to see a mapping of where
persons with disabilities live in place.
 Anna: Map Your Neighborhood program. The program address the fact
that people with disabilities live in local neighborhoods and are included
like everyone else. Neighbors meet as a group and start preparing, like
where the care center might be, who has certain equipment for
disasters etc. Emergency management, public education helps map out
where the people with disabilities live. Anna will send the link to Sarah.
 Louis: Care Tracker is a system that tracks people who use personal
assisted services or are in the in home supportive services system. It also
gives detail about what the persons needs are, what they are capable of
doing in crises situations etc. and the response team can determine how
to handle these people based on the program.
Challenges/Areas of Concern: None
Recommendations and Next Steps/Action Items: None
Action Items: Anna will send Sarah the list of items they give away in the grab and go bag,
and all other related material and Sarah will distribute to group.
Item
Use of Emergency Registries, All
 Reflect on the December Learning Community Webinar featuring June Isaacson Kailes
 Discuss use of emergency registries Learning Community Direction and Goals
Discussion
Highlights/Key Points:
 Steve: Utah has a statewide registry. The problem is that there are legal issues with
cities and counties on how the information can be used and the expectations of the
registry.
 Pat: Kent County is looking at Smart 911, which is a whole community type of
application that anyone can use. It’s not limited to just people with disabilities. It’s
Action
Item
Discussion
Action
free to the public and they are going to start looking at that locally.
Challenges/Areas of Concern: None
Recommendations and Next Steps/Action Items: None
None Sarah will look into contacting Smart 911 to give a talk on how to use it and what it can
be used for.
Learning Community Direction and Goals, Sarah Yates
 Provide feedback on Learning Community, including ideas for future webinars
Highlights/Key Points:
 People found the SharePoint site and the webinars useful.
 The group decided that they would like a combination of workgroup calls and webinars.
They would like a webinar on Smart 911.
Challenges/Areas of Concern: None
Recommendations and Next Steps/Action Items: None
None