Health & Disability Advocates

HDA CEO Barb Otto showcases Think Beyond the Label's Hire Gauge tool to calculate the ROI on disability employment in Fox Business feature "When it's Time to Hire, Don't Ignore the Disabled"

CSPAN-2 TV: National Academy of Social Insurance forum on Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) featured HDA's senior policy expert Lisa Ekman. Watch the archived video.

Illinois Health Matters new interactive map shows impact of health care reform in 2014 on uninsured Illinois residents. Coverage from Kaiser Health News and Crain's.  

HDA's senior policy expert Lisa Ekman invited to testify to Congress: the House Committee on Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security regarding how disability is decided.

HDA CEO and Think Beyond The Label co-founder Barb Otto featured in BusinessWeek's "A New Push to Hire the Disabled"

Illinois Health Matters launches "Neighborhood Stories" -- true tales of health care reform on the south and west sides of Chicago.

Just in time for back to school: CBS Chicago Channel 2 News featured a television interview with HDA and one of our clients about the recently passed Home Hospital Instruction Bill.  

Bill protects children from losing ground in school during extended illness, disability.  Gov. Quinn signed the Home/Hospital Instruction bill (HB1706) in July. HDA helped amend the Illinois School Code to clarify the law to ensure a student's ability to maintain his or her academic performance and standing during extending and intermitten medical absence and recovery periods. Previously, many school districts were delaying instruction and special services or not providing at all.

Report released on research required from Consent Decree in Memisovski v. Maram.  A report on the ability of Illinois' Medicaid-insured children to access subspecialty medical care is now available online.  This report includes recommendations to reduce the barriers that children in Cook County face in accessing health care.  The full report is available here.  The Executive Summary can be viewed here. 

HDA Attorneys Receive Award from Illinois Maternal Health and Child Coalition. Programs and Policy Director Stephanie Altman, JD, and Amy Zimmerman, JD, Project Director of the Chicago Medical Legal Partnership for Children were honored for having made a significant impact on maternal and child health in Illinois. They received the annual Loretta Lacey Maternal and Child Health Advocacy Award from the Illinois Maternal and Child Health Coalition, the leading statewide organization working to guarantee the health, safety, and well-being, of infants, children, mothers, and families.

New Bill Provides Services to Kids whose Parents are Deployed.  HDA helped draft legislation recently passed by the Illinois Legislature that offers students support services when they have relatives in the military who are deployed.  It enables schools to ask their students at enrollment if they have parents or guardians in the military and if they have recently been deployed.  This allows groups like the National Guard to come to the schools to provide services to those students. To learn more about the legislation, click here to read the May 31, 2011 Chicago Tribune story on House Bill 2870.