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Emergency Evacuation Preparedness: Taking Responsibility For Your Safety
A Guide For People with Disabilities and Other Activity Limitations
The Center for Disability Issues and the Health Professions (CDIHP) at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, California, announces a new 36 page guide to help people with disabilities better prepared for large or small-scale emergencies. The guide's focus helps people with disabilities take responsibility for their own safety during emergencies and evacuations and work effectively with first responders.
"In this post-9/11 world, people with disabilities must take responsibility for their own safety," said Brenda Premo, CDHIP Director. "There is a universal human tendency to avoid thinking about possible emergencies. This avoidance has greater consequences for people with disabilities than for people without disabilities."
"No matter what laws and public policies say, it's up to us as people with disabilities to individually and collectively do what we need to do to prepare for disasters. If we just rely on employers, building managers, or fire inspectors to make sure things are in place, it may or may not happen. It is not safe to assume that people with disabilities have been included in evacuation plans. People with disabilities must take an assertive proactive approach to ensure that our life safety needs are included in all emergency planning," says June Isaacson Kailes, the Guide's author and CDIHP's Associate Director. Ms. Kailes, is known internationally for her disability-related work in access, health and wellness, aging and disaster preparedness.
This free guide is available at here or you can order a hard copy for $24.00 which includes shipping, handling and applicable sales tax, by sending a check to:
CDIHP
309 E. 2nd Street
Pomona, CA 91766-1854
Contact CDIHP for pricing on bulk or international orders at:
Phone: 909.469.5380
TTY: 909.469.5520
Fax: 909.469.5407
Email: evac@westernu.edu
Training for First Responders
CDIHP also has an ongoing training program, to help educate emergency personnel and people with disabilities to be better prepared for large or small-scale emergencies. The workshop is comprised of materials and interactive exercises to help first responders develop awareness, sensitivity, knowledge and skills needed to effectively assist people with disabilities. For more information contact June Isaacson Kailes, CDIHP's Associate Director Phone 310-821-7080 or jik@pacbell.net
Evacuation Issues for People With Disabilities and Other Activity Limitations: A First Responder's Training Guide
- This training guide provides an orientation to help first responders develop awareness, sensitivity, knowledge and skills needed to effectively assist people with disabilities and activity limitations in emergency planning and evacuations.
- The training materials will include one and two-hour trainer content outlines, handouts, power point slides, interactive exercises, and guided discussions.
Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) on Accessible Medical Instrumentation
In November of 2002 Western University's Center for Disability Issues and the Health Professions (CDIHP) will join in a, five-year grant that will create a center to evaluate methods and tools to increase the usability of health care equipment. Those who benefit will include people with disabilities who are health care providers as well as users of health care services. The project will target four major constituent groups: individuals with disabilities as healthcare recipients, individuals with disabilities as healthcare service providers, healthcare service delivery administrators, and medical instrumentation manufacturers.
The grant is from the U.S. Department of Education's National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. The project's partners include Marquette University with four organizations in California, including Western University of Health Sciences' Center for Disability Issues and the Health Professions (CDIHP), the University of California at San Francisco and Berkeley's Ergonomics Lab, Human Spectrum Design, L.L.C., and Kaiser Permanente.