Susan Wolf-Fordham of UMass Medical School’s Eunice K. Shriver Center will delve into her work as a pioneer for the inclusion of people with disabilities into emergency planning at an invite-only federal stakeholder meeting on emergency preparedness to be held in Washington, D.C. this week.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR), in conjunction with the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO), selected Wolf-Fordham to present at the Capacity Building Toolkit stakeholder meeting. Wolf-Fordham is director of the Emergency Preparedness Initiative at the Shriver Center and an instructor in UMass Medical School’s Department of Family Medicine and Community Health

ASPR has a cooperative agreement with NACCHO and ASTHO to draft a toolkit to integrate into emergency planning those human services provider organizations that serve elders and individuals with disabilities. It also seeks to build relationships with local public health preparedness and emergency management organizations, areas of expertise for Wolf-Fordham, a tireless advocate for equal access to emergency services for individuals with disabilities.

Wolf-Fordham is slated to discuss tools and trainings she has spearheaded and implemented as a leader at the Shriver Center to help ASPR and its partners build the toolkit.

Nationally recognized for her work, Wolf-Fordham was featured in a video by the National Center for Disaster Medicine & Public Health on communities with access and functional needs working together on disaster preparation, and contributed to the Together We’re Ready – Massachusetts Prepared campaign, an effort of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.