Access Living Friends and Allies,
It's important to know your rights when you need medical care.
Please join us at 5 p.m. Monday, August 3, for a webinar about fighting discrimination in medical crisis standards of care and hospital visitor policies for Illinoisans with disabilities during COVID-19 and beyond.
In April, Access Living took the initiative to organize more than 140 Illinois organizations to ask the State to issue guidance to medical providers saying emergency lifesaving protocols could not discriminate against people with disabilities. State officials responded, developing guidance.
However, the recent death of Michael Hickson, a Black disabled father who had Covid-19 and was denied medical care at a Texas hospital, has reignited an important national conversation about the value of disabled lives.
As the global pandemic stretches on:
- Disabled people are more at risk of experiencing the most severe COVID-19 symptoms due to underlying health conditions
- COVID-19 is more prevalent in Illinois nursing homes and other institutional settings, nationwide
- Disability-related discrimination in the rationing of COVID-19 care is happening despite guidance to stop it
- Disability rates are higher in communities of color, compounding existing medical structural racism with ableism
Panelists for this discussion include:
- Karen Tamley, President and CEO of Access Living
- James L. (Jim) Bennett, appointed Illinois Department of Human Rights Director under Governor JB Pritzker in January 2019
- Anita Cameron, Director of Minority Outreach at Not Dead Yet, a national disability rights group
- Mary Rosenberg, Staff Attorney at Access Living where she represents people with disabilities in discrimination cases
- Emcee: Dr. Angel Miles, Healthcare and Home and Community-based Services Policy Analyst at Access Living
ASL interpretation and CART provided for this discussion.
There will also be time for a Q&A at the end of the webinar. Due to the limitations of the Zoom webinar platform, questions submitted during the event via chat are not accessible to participants using screen readers. We encourage all attendees to submit questions in advance via this form on our website.
We hope to see you there.