EPIC > Office on Disability and Health

Project Goal

The California Take Action Project seeks to promote the health and quality of life of people with disabilities and to prevent or lessen the effects of secondary conditions through collaborative leadership to affect environmental, policy and systems changes.

Major Activities

In partnership with the University of California, San Francisco Disability Statistics Center, ODH proposes several initiatives to coordinate a statewide response to the needs of persons with disabilities, guided by the Universal Livability: A Dream for Tomorrow, A Plan for Today:  California 2005-10 Strategic Plan for Promoting the Health of People with Disabilities (View the Plan as a web page or in Word (127k)).  ODH will serve as the coordinating center for the Take Action Project, which includes the following three focus areas:

• Focus Area One - Enhance the infrastructure and capacity building at the state level to support incorporation of people with disabilities in DHS’ policy making; data surveillance, analysis and reporting; and health promotion program planning, marketing, outreach, implementation and evaluation.
• Focus Area Two- Promote the Social Model of Disability research by examining existing available data and validating and including a standard set of questions, the Disability and Activity Impact Screener (DAIS), that identifies “people with disabilities” from a Social Model framework in the future.
• Focus Area Three - Increase the proportion of health and wellness programs and the number of facilities that provide full access to persons with disabilities through training and technical assistance to state, regional and local programs.

Contact Us

• If you have programmatic or administrative questions about the Take Action Project, please email the Program Manager, Lisa Hershey at LHershey@dhs.ca.gov.
• If you have an research or data questions about the Take Action Project, please email the Research Principal Investigator, Steve Kaye at Steve.Kaye@ucsf.edu.

This project was supported by Grant/Cooperative Agreement U59/CCU921228, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center on Birth Defects and Development Disabilities.