close up of hands signing contract.

Using Contracts to Lessen Inequities in Access to Medicines in Pandemics and Epidemics

By Sapna Kumar and Ana Santos Rutschman

Research funding contracts can help to safeguard against profound inequities in global allocation and distribution of lifesaving diagnostics, drugs, and vaccines.

During large transnational public health crises, global demand soars for diagnostics, drugs, and vaccines. Although some of these products can be developed within compressed timelines, global production capacity remains limited. Against a backdrop of product scarcity, wealthier countries can out-bid their lower-income counterparts and capture most of the supply during the early stages of pandemics and epidemics. This leaves the vulnerable low-income populations waiting months, or even years, for their turn.

This predictable, inequitable pattern can be held off before the next pandemic. At the research and development (R&D) stage, government funders can bind producers to equity goals through targeted contractual provisions, as we explain in a recently-published Nature Biotechnology article. We summarize our proposals in the following sections. Read More

3d render, abstract fantasy cloudscape on a sunny day, white clouds fly under the red gates on the blue sky. Square portal construction.

Workplace Accommodations in a Post-COVID Era

By Scott J. Schweikart

The silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic is that it has opened the door to new opportunities to improve our society. For example, office changes brought about by the pandemic — e.g., remote working or telecommuting — made life easier for many workers with disabilities. However, as more of the workforce begins returning to the office, there are notable examples of employers pushing back on the increased accommodations realized during the pandemic, indicating that some gains in accommodation will continue to be hard fought. In an effort to rid our society of harmful inequities, the struggle for these rights has important value.

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Female freelance programmer in modern headphones sitting in wheelchair and using computers while coding web game at home.

Injustice Anywhere: The Need to Decouple Disability and Productivity

By Brooke Ellison

There is a profound need to deconstruct and actively reconstruct the interpretation of disability as it is currently understood.

The current framing of disability as inability — whether an inability to be employed or otherwise — has utterly failed not only people with disabilities, but also the communities in which they live.

This perception of disability is a relic of attitudinal and policy structures put into place by people who do not live with disability themselves: people who may have been ignorant to the virtues that living with disability engenders.

Current calls for attention to a disability bioethics or a disability epistemology have heralded not only highlighting, but also actively promoting, the qualities, leadership skills, and valuable character traits associated with surviving and thriving in a world fundamentally not set up for one’s own needs.

Before any meaningful movement can be made when it comes to the employment of people with disabilities — whether in the form of workplace accommodations, flexible work settings, recruitment practices, or limitations on earnings — the underlying assumption about the value of their presence in the workforce needs to change.

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Close-up of hands in white gloves pulling curtain away

Fostering Mentally Healthier Workplaces via Disability Advocacy: COVID-Era Strategies and Successes

By Zachary F. Murguía Burton

Can employers foster mentally healthier workplaces via theater?

Here, I discuss a mental health advocacy and inclusivity initiative built around a theatrical production, The Manic Monologues, with a particular focus on pandemic-era efforts to foster awareness, empathy, and connection around mental health challenges.

These efforts aim to promote healthier and more inclusive (and, by extension, more productive) workplaces in the face of the ongoing, escalating global mental health crisis.

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Ponta Grossa/PR/Brazil - July 15th 2020: Home office, working from home layout during covid-19 pandemic

Employers Should Bear Responsibility for Making Remote Work Environments Accessible

By Christopher A. Riddle

Remote work meaningfully facilitates inclusion of people with disabilities in the labor market.

But, to truly fulfill its promise, employers must also take steps to ensure that remote work accommodations are not made at the expense of the employee, simply because their labor is conducted in their own home.

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Lady Justice blindfolded with scales.

Achieving Economic Security for Disabled People During COVID-19 and Beyond

By Robyn Powell

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the pervasive inequities experienced by historically marginalized communities, including people with disabilities.

Activists, legal professionals, scholars, and policymakers must critically examine the limitations of our current disability laws and policies, including the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), to elucidate why disabled people continue to endure these inequities, including those related to economic insecurity.

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Social Security Administration Important Information letter next to flag of USA.

Blue Booking Long COVID: Accounting for Long-Term COVID-19 Complications in Social Security Disability Benefits Evaluations

By Jacob Madden

Long COVID has left an estimated 1.6 million Americans unable to work. Those experiencing Long COVID face long-term neurological issues, heart problems, lung damage, and myriad other complications following an initial bout with COVID-19.

Though some who are incapacitated by Long COVID will eventually be able to return to work, others may never work again. Going forward, we must find a way to account and provide for these individuals. Here I suggest a potential solution in amending the Social Security Administration’s Blue Book to include Long COVID in the evaluation of disability benefits.

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View over woman' shoulder seated at desk, videoconferencing on computer.

Our New Remote Workplace Culture Creates Opportunities for Disabled Employees

By Arlene S. Kanter

While the COVID-19 pandemic has taken an enormous toll on the nation, it has also opened an unprecedented opportunity to transform our workplaces and offer greater flexibility for employees with and without disabilities.

This shift in our workplace culture presents employment opportunities for disabled people that they may not have had in the past, even with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

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NEW YORK, NEW YORK: MAY 18, 2020: A jogger runs past a banner by the Battery Park City Authority reminding park visitors to please wear face masks.

Negotiating Masks in the Workplace: When the ADA Does and Does Not Apply

By Katherine Macfarlane

Workplaces are, by and large, no longer safe for employees who are high-risk for serious illness or death from COVID-19.

During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was common for workplaces to require masks, at least in shared spaces. Two years later, though the pandemic is still ongoing, mask requirements are now far less prevalent as a result of the politicization of masks, so-called mask fatigue, and new guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

This move to relax masking rules presents significant dangers to those most vulnerable to severe outcomes from COVID-19. High-risk employees still need their co-workers to wear masks. They must now negotiate for safe workplaces in a social and political climate that is increasingly indifferent (or actively hostile) to their needs.

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children wearing masks.

Reconsidering Mask Mandates

By Carmel Shachar

The desire to get back to “normal” is an understandable one. And despite their prevalence for the last two years, masks don’t fit into most people’s concept of normal.

But removing mask requirements means rejecting yet another public health tool to control the pandemic and protect our health care system.

First, some context: most states haven’t had indoor mask mandates in place for many months. As of February 10th, only Washington, Oregon, California, New Mexico, Hawaii, Illinois, and Delaware had statewide indoor mask mandates. These remaining few states are now taking steps to end mask policies. Some states have narrower mask mandates that apply to schools, and are similarly moving to end such policies.

But the decision to end these mandates is not made in a vacuum. We should be thinking about what other public health initiatives and components should be in place before we lift these protections.

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