Disability Section Awards Committee Report

The Disability Section honored three awardees at the 2009 Annual Meeting in Philadelphia: 1) Lifetime Achievement Award: Barbara M. Altman; 2) New Investigator Award: Willi Horner-Johnson; 3) Student Award: Cheri Blauwet. Summaries of each of the awardees’ accomplishments can be found at http://thenationshealth.aphapublications.org. The December 2009/January 2010 issue of The Nation’s Health lists the Disability Section Awards on p. 17.  Call for nominations for the 2010 awards will be publicized through the Disability Section listserv beginning in February.

Lifetime Achievement Award: Barbara M. Altman

Barbara M. Altman is a sociologist with a PhD from the University of Maryland. Recently retired from the National Center for Health Statistics, CDC, where she served as Special Assistant on Disability Statistics to the office of the Director, she also worked at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality on the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. Prior to her work in the government, she served as Undergraduate Coordinator in the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland. She currently serves as a consultant on disability statistics issues. She played a key role in the organization and development of the work of the Washington Group, an international group working under the auspices of the United Nations, to develop culturally compatible measures of disability for international use and still consults on that activity. Her disability research interests focus primarily on disability definition and measurement, financing and utilization of health care services by persons with disabilities, and disability among minority groups, particularly Native Americans. She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on disability topics including the recent Disability and Health in the United States Chartbook, and currently is co-editor of the series Research in Social Science and Disability. She has also been the recipient of an NIDRR Switzer Fellowship for the purpose of writing a comprehensive book on disability statistics which is forthcoming.

New Investigator Award: Willi-Horner-Johnson

Willi Horner-Johnson received her PhD in community psychology in 2002 from the University of Illinois at Chicago and completed a post-doctoral fellowship with the Oregon Office on Disability and Health at Oregon Health & Science University.  She is now a Research Assistant Professor of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at OHSU, and is an investigator in the Center on Community Accessibility.  Willi is currently Principal Investigator of two projects. The first is a grant from the National Center on Child Health and Human Development to assess the effectiveness of the Healthy Lifestyles health promotion program with adults with intellectual disabilities.  More recently, she received funding through the AUCD-NCBDDD cooperative agreement for a Research Topics of Interest project to examine health disparities at the intersection of race, ethnicity and disability.  Willi also serves as Co-Investigator of the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center (RRTC) on Health & Wellness, Co-Investigator of a Disability and Rehabilitation Research Project (DRRP) on health and health care disparities among people with disabilities, and Epidemiologist for the Oregon Office on Disability and Health.  Within the RRTC, Willi directs research studies on health measurement in persons with disabilities, and leads the RRTC National Expert Panel on Health Measurement.  Within the DRRP, she is leading secondary data analyses examining system and individual-level factors that predict health disparities among people with disabilities.  Willi is treasurer of the APHA Disability Section, and co-founder and former chair of the Disability Section of the Oregon Public Health Association. 

Student Award: Cheri Blauwet 

Cheri Blauwet, MD, was born and raised on a farm near the small town of Larchwood, Iowa. She sustained a spinal cord injury in a farming accident as a young child but was immediately encouraged to be active, involved, and to see disability as simply another way of living rather than as an impairment. Upon entering high school, her track coach encouraged her to join the track team when he learned that Iowa held sanctioned wheelchair events at the state finals. By her sophomore year she had set records at the state level and began competing nationally. In the fall of 1998 Cheri began her academic and racing career at the University of Arizona. She became the captain of the wheelchair track and road racing team and continued to realize her athletic potential. In 2000, she became a name on the international scene, bringing home a silver and three bronze medals from the 2000 Paralympic Games in Sydney, Australia. Since then, she has achieved resounding success on the international elite racing circuit: Winner, 2003, 2004 New York City Marathon; Winner, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008 Los Angeles Marathon; Winner, 2004, 2005 Boston Marathon; Gold Medal, 2004 Athens Paralympic Games: 800 meters; Bronze Medals, 2004 Athens Paralympic Games: 5000 meters and Marathon. She was nominated for the 2003 Women’s Sports Foundation Sportswoman of the Year, in addition to two consecutive nominations, in 2004 and 2005, for the ESPY award in the category Best Athlete with a Disability. Cheri was also a nominee for the 2005 Laureus World Sport Award  “World Sportsperson of the Year with a Disability.” Cheri sees sports as one platform through which she can promote disability rights and empowerment at an international level. In 2004, she was named a winner of the Paul Hearne Leadership Award, given to three emerging leaders annually by the American Association of People with Disabilities. She has also worked at the International Paralympic Committee, promoting international sporting opportunities and a mechanism for international development, and with Rehabilitation International, a large multilateral disability rights member organization with both governmental and non-governmental representatives. She is author of “The Paralympic Movement: Promoting Health and Human Rights through Sport.” Cheri is a resident in Internal Medicine at the Brigham and Women's Hospital. Her goal is to pursue the specialty of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and to promote the health and social empowerment of people with a disability, particularly in low-resource settings.