National Advisory Board

The National Advisory Board (NAB) on Improving Health Care Services for Seniors and People with Disabilities is composed of distinguished and culturally diverse community advocates, health care experts, and academics who provide guidance and policy recommendations for improving programs and services for seniors and people with disabilities.

Vision

We believe it is necessary for all Americans to be educated about the issues facing seniors and people with disabilities for two critical reasons.

• First, the course of aging is a naturally occurring process which affects each of us.
• Second, no person is impervious to disability. A parent or spouse can become paralyzed as a result of a stroke, an infant can be born with an intellectual disability, a child can become disabled as a result of a playground injury, or a best friend can develop major depression and substance abuse as a result of being a soldier at war.

Disability can occur at any time or through the natural process of aging. Disability extends across race, age, ethnicity, level of education, and socioeconomic status. Simply, none of us is immune to aging or living with a disability.

Therefore, we believe Americans must be educated on the health, wellness, social, and economic issues facing seniors and persons with disabilities so that we collectively can design a future infrastructure that works and is accessible by all.

Who We Are

As a Board, we are people with disabilities; children of aging parents; parents of children and adults with disabilities; and sisters, brothers, spouses, children, and friends of people with disabilities. We represent millions of Americans with disabilities and seniors and their family members, who have struggled with the complexities of our fragmented health care system. Each of us brings a personal perspective to the subject of long term care because each of us has personal experience with it. We, individually and collectively, have worked along with other Americans to overcome the many hurdles to obtain the services we need to live successfully in our communities—hurdles such as the lack of coordination between acute and long term services and supports, antiquated systems and policies, and lack of infrastructure development for long term services.

For more information about the NAB, go to www.declarationforindependence.org >>