Time: 3:00-4:30pm Eastern Time

Description: There are thousands of people in recovery from addiction who are unaware of their civil rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The ADA insures that people with addiction to alcohol and individuals in recovery from opioids and other drugs have the same rights and opportunities as everyone else. Attendees will learn how the ADA protects people with disabilities from discrimination in employment, social services agencies, child welfare agencies, courts, prisons, jails, and medical facilities, including hospitals, doctors’ offices, and skilled nursing facilities. This presentation will discuss how the ADA protects people in recovery with opioid use disorder (OUD), including those who are taking legally prescribed medication to treat their opioid use disorder (MOUD).

Presenters:

Oce Harrison, EdD, directed the New England ADA Center since 2001 and provides ADA, Addiction, and Recovery trainings throughout the region and nationally. She created an ADA addiction recovery toolkit with the National Hispanic and Latino Addiction Technology Transfer Center. Harrison has presented for the Opioid Response Network; National Association for Addiction Professionals (NAADAC); Massachusetts Organization for Addiction and Recovery (MOAR); and on behalf of Learn to Cope in 25 cities and towns. Harrison led the ADA National Network in creating the ADA, Addiction and Recovery Fact Sheet Series and published an article in NAADAC’s magazine on How the ADA Addresses ADA, Addiction and Recovery (Spring 2020).

Barry Whaley, MS, works at the Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse University. He is the Co-Principal Investigator and Project Director of the Southeast ADA Center, Principal Co-Collaborator with the University of Leeds (UK) Inclusive Public Spaces project, Co-Collaborator with the University of Queensland (AU) Gender, Equity, Disability, and Social Inclusion Mainstreaming Short Course, and Principal Investigator of the Mid-Atlantic Youth and Self-Advocacy project. His current research is examining the impact of intersectionality of race, disability, ethnicity, gender, and age on three ADA-related issues, 1) employment, 2) access to digital technology, 3) long and short-term poverty.

Pam Williamson, BS, serves as the Assistant Director of the Southeast ADA Center, a project of the Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse University. The Southeast ADA Center is a member of the ADA National Network and is funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research, a center within the Administration for Community Living located in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Williamson contributed to the development and implementation of four online courses: Foundations of the Americans with Disabilities Act; ADA Basic Building Blocks; At Your Service: Welcoming Customers with Disabilities; and the ADA Title II Tutorial. She also co-authored the curricula, Serving Customers with Disabilities in Air Travel and the ADA and Self-Advocacy for Youth - Train-the-Trainer Curriculum: An Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Roadmap, and the publication, The ADA and Face Mask Policies. Williamson is a person with a psychiatric and neurological disability. She has a Bachelor of science degree in Therapeutic Recreation from Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia.

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will be able to describe how the ADA protects people with disabilities from discrimination in employment, social services and child welfare agencies, courts, prisons and jails, and medical facilities.
• Participants will be able to distinguish how the ADA applies to people with addiction to alcohol, and those in recovery from opioids and other drugs.
• Participants will be able to summarize how the ADA protects people in recovery with OUD including those who are taking legally-prescribed medication to treat their opioid use disorder (OUD).