Year 3 Evaluation Summary

Partnerships

Establish, expand, and enhance partnerships

The DHAWG poses at the in-person June meeting in Concord, NH. From left to right: Megan Henly, Kris van Bergen-Buteau, Vanessa Blais, Robert Scholz, Kelly Ehrhart, Jennifer Pineo, Jennifer Fitzsimmons, Martha McLeod, Brittany Potvin, Cindy Lafond, Deb Ritcey, Emilia Poehlman, Kathy Bates, Toni Sumner-Beebe, Ashley Caswell, Karen Volle.

NH DHP Strengthens Oral Health Partnerships

ABLE NH, the state’s disability justice organization, identified oral healthcare access as a priority. The organization has taken a critical leadership role in improving access to oral healthcare for people with disabilities. ABLE NH facilitates a monthly Oral Healthcare Task Force where advocates and oral health stakeholders come together to discuss gaps and barriers and strategize around solutions. Since September 2023, NH DHP staff have attended this monthly meeting.

NH DHP’s participation in the task force has strengthened existing relationships and developed new partnerships with advocates and stakeholders. Additionally, NH DHP staff identified an area where the program could address barriers to accessible oral healthcare for people with disabilities: training oral healthcare professionals in disability-competent care. Through the NH DHP partnership network, our team identified a content area expert in oral health and four disability advocates with lived experience to contribute to a new Responsive Practice module, which is already in production.

NH DHP LEND Trainee Focuses on Food Security

Megan Henly and Nathaniel Livernois at the LEND Capstone event in May 2024.

Through feedback from the DHAWG and the needs assessments, DHP identified food security as a significant health issue for people with disabilities in NH. This year, DHP published a Food Security & Disability Needs Assessment Report. Nathaniel Livernois, a student in the NH-ME Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (LEND) program, worked with the DHP team to conduct accessibility assessments of food pantries in his NH community as part of his leadership placement. Nathaniel used the National Center for Health, Physical Activity, and Disability’s (NCHPAD) Community Health Inclusion Index to assess for organizational and environmental barriers that could limit access to food for people with disabilities.  Through his LEND leadership placement, Nathaniel assessed four pantries in the Greater Derry, New Hampshire area. In July 2024, Nathaniel joined NH DHP as a staff member to continue this work in Year 4.

UNH Nursing and NH DHP collaborate on Responsive Practice outreach video

In Year 3, two professors from the University of New Hampshire (UNH) nursing program implemented policy changes to their course syllabi, requiring that their students complete Responsive Practice as part of the curricula.  Because this course is mandatory for all nursing students, all future UNH Nursing students will receive training in providing disability-competent care and screening.

This change reflects a commitment to enhancing disability competence among nursing students. NH DHP heard from UNH Nursing faculty and students about the importance and value of including disability competence training in health education programs through the brief clip below. NH DHP plans to use this video as an outreach tool to encourage faculty from other health education programs to adopt similar practices. The UNH Nursing program is an excellent example of integrating disability competence training into existing curricula. We hope this inspires other programs statewide to follow their lead and educate future health professionals on best practices when working with patients with disabilities.

New Partnership with NH Special Olympics to Share the Health Linkage Program

This year, NH DHP established a new partnership with Special Olympics-New Hampshire (SONH), creating a valuable opportunity to introduce the Health Linkage Program to SONH athletes. Health Linkage Program staff attended the SONH Winter Games in March, where they shared information with athletes and their families. SONH then invited the team back to participate in their Healthy Athletes event at the statewide summer games in June. Athletes who received referrals from their health exams or wanted to work on a health goal scheduled informational calls and appointments with our Linkage Coordinators onsite.  

Living Well in the Community incorporated into UNH-Bridges Curriculum

NH DHP worked with the UNH Bridges Training Series, a UNH Institute on Disability program that offers college and career training for young adults ages 18-24 with intellectual disabilities (ID). Bridges Training staff incorporated the Living Well training into the existing curriculum on healthy and social aspects of life. Four participants completed the training through their enrollment in the Bridges program.

After this successful Living Well session, DHP staff solicited feedback from our two program hosts to date: the UNH Bridges Program and Granite State Independent Living.  Our team also received feedback from prospective partners at the Granite YMCA who were trained as Living Well facilitators. DHP incorporated input received in these feedback sessions by updating the training materials in consultation with the authors. In response, NH DHP staff drafted new slides incorporating plain language and more inclusive imagery to support future workshops in Years 4 and 5.

NH DHP Continues Progress in Three Focus Areas in Year 3

PSE changes result from the relationship between our partnerships and needs assessments, conducted within an evaluation of our resources and partners' resources. We continue to be committed to three topical areas identified as important to our advisory work group and our partners: food security and nutrition, transportation, and oral health. As our program activities above demonstrate, we have met milestones that we anticipate will be the pathways to lasting PSE changes.

Food Security and Nutrition: We continue to reach out to local food pantries to provide them with assessments to understand how they could improve accessibility to their patrons. We anticipate this will result in new relationships with individual sites and could also yield findings useful to other local food and nutrition programs.

Transportation: NH DHP continues to be represented on regional transportation boards. In addition, our team hosts a disability transportation work group that brings together advocates and program representatives from other UNH programs and regional organizations focusing on disability or transportation.

Oral Health: This year, our team spent time considering how we could leverage our resources as trainers in providing disability-competent, responsive healthcare to dental providers so that we may improve access to quality oral healthcare for adults with disabilities in NH. This is particularly timely as the adult Medicaid benefit expanded to include dental benefits in 2023. This work continues.

NH DHP Brings Disability Lens to Local Health Conferences

This spring, the NH DHP presented about disability and accessibility to healthcare workers at two local conferences. Megan Henly and Kathy Bates, DHP’s Accessibility and Inclusion Specialist, delivered “Lighting the Way to Inclusive Health for the Disability Community” to community health workers at the NH Community Health Worker Summit and “Identifying Barriers to Substance Misuse Treatment” to substance use workers at the Strafford County Public Health Network (SCPHN) Addiction Summit. Both presentations were well-received, with attendees appreciating the blend of Kathy’s lived experiences and Megan’s data-driven insights. One participant from the CHW Summit noted, “I liked the first-hand experience from Kathy. Megan’s presentation of statistics put the numbers into perspective as well.” Through these efforts, NH DHP aims to leverage opportunities to educate health professionals about disability inclusion to identify sustainable organizational changes that will improve the lives of people with disabilities across the state. An attendee at the SCPHN shared that one thing they will do differently after the training is “ensure that our residential program can be more accessible as it's in an old house.”