Operationalizing Accessibility in Healthcare - Implementation Guidance for Healthcare Organizations

This session was recorded 06/25/26. People with disabilities experience significant disparities in health and healthcare outcomes. This is largely because HCOs, even the most well-intentioned, remain inaccessible. The Disability Equity Collaborative’s latest resource, “Accessible Healthcare for People with Disabilities: An Implementation Guide for Healthcare Organizations” is one of few resources available to support HCOs in delivering equal access to care for their patients with disabilities. Whether your organization is a small clinic or a large health system, join us to learn how you can use DEC’s Implementation Guide to establish system-level processes that facilitate equal access to care for your patients with disabilities. We will review the Guide’s four chapters, dive into the step-by-step guidance, tools, and resources provided, and share other organizations’ experiences using the Guide to improve access to care. Dr. Megan Morris is the Founder and Director of DEC. She is a faculty member in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at New York University Langone Health. The goal of her research is to improve the quality of health and healthcare services for people with disabilities. Specifically, she seeks to understand and address both structural and interpersonal ableism that affects the care received by this population. To achieve this, she has developed a comprehensive research program focused on: (a) creating and implementing systematic methods for documenting patients’ disability status and accommodation needs in the Electronic Health Record; (b) improving communication and interactions between healthcare teams and people with disabilities through educational and clinical interventions; and (c) evaluating the implementation and effects of disability healthcare policies on provision of accessible healthcare. She has served as a PI on multiple funded studies to support these initiatives. Her research and advocacy are deeply informed by both personal and professional experiences with ableism in the healthcare setting. Eve Schoenberg is the Project Coordinator for DEC at NYU Langone Health. Previously, she spent three years working on Capitol Hill in communications and health and disability policy roles.