University of Kansas Team
Glen W. White, Ph.D., MICL director, has been involved in the rehabilitation and independent living field for more than 30 years. Currently director of the Research and Training Center on Independent Living at the University of Kansas, he serves as principal investigator of the Research and Training Center on Measurement and Interdependence on Community Living. As a professor of applied behavioral science, community psychology, and disability studies in the Department of Applied Behavioral Science at the University of Kansas, White also directs the Research Group on Rehabilitation and Independent Living at the University of Kansas. An example of his work with consumers with disabilities in identifying, developing and shaping ongoing disability research, White has been developing a systematic research line in the area of prevention of secondary conditions and health promotion. More recently, White has been conducting research in disaster planning and emergency response for people with disabilities. He is past president of the National Association of Rehabilitation Research and Training Centers, chaired the American Public Health Association’s Disability Forum, and serves as an advisor and consultant to many national organizations.

Amanda Reichard, Ph.D., MICL research director, has been active in health research since 1995 having received her M.S. in Health and Social Behavior from the Harvard School of Public Health. She has directed several health projects including those involving barriers to accessing health care for individuals with developmental disabilities as well as medical and dental training on developmental disabilities. In addition, she has been a senior policy analyst for the Kansas Health Institute and also for the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services, Health Care Policy Division.

Martha Hodgesmith, J.D., uses her legal training to analyze the impact of laws and policies on the lives of persons with disabilities. She has developed collaborative systems for distribution and training that have been implemented at local, regional, and national levels on vocational rehabilitation, special education, social security disability, public benefits law, elder law, Americans With Disabilities Act application to the state court system and other public entities, health care fraud, patient/abuse neglect, and public financing of community based services. She has been a board member of the National Council on Independent Living and was an appointee to the State Independent Living Council of Kansas and recently completed a Kansas center for living economic impact study. She also participated in the drafting of legislation and the lobbying efforts that resulted in passage of the Kansas Developmental Disabilities Reform Act, the primary state law affecting the rights of persons with developmental disabilities and the Kansas Medicaid Fraud Control Act, the first comprehensive Kansas criminal statute on health care fraud. In addition, she developed a the first Medicaid Fraud Control Unit in the state of Kansas, was a member of the CMS Fraud and Abuse Control Technical Assistance Work Group, and managed state and federally supported community-based services for persons with disabilities as director of Community Supports and Services in the Health Care Policy Division of the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services.

Cornell University
Andrew J. Houtenville, Ph.D., the project director of the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Disability Demographics and Statistics, investigates patterns in the demographic characteristics, employment, and economic participation of people with disabilities. He also studies the implications of government programs. His investigations include the identification of the population with disabilities, factors related to the decline in the employment of people with disabilities during the boom years of the 1990s, the relationship between Social Security disability programs on the employment of people with disabilities, and inclusion of students with disabilities in standardized testing. The outreach components of these projects include efforts to increase the access to and understanding of disability-related statistics, notably the continuing development of the web site, www.DisabilityStatistics.org, and work with agencies and advocacy organizations to assist them in their efforts to improve the lives of people with disabilities and their families. Houtenville is also the assistant director for Research at the Cornell University Employment and Disability Institute and the current president of the National Association of Rehabilitation Research and Training Centers.

Anne Sieverding provides administrative and research support to the research unit within the Employment and Disability Institute.

Oregon Health and Sciences University
Charles E. Drum, J.D., Ph.D., is the founding director of the Center on Community Accessibility; co-director of the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Health and Wellness at the Oregon Institute on Disability & Development, Child Development and Rehabilitation Center; and an associate professor of Public Health and Prevention Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University. Drum earned his doctorate in social policy from the Heller School at Brandeis University; his thesis advisor was sociologist Irving Kenneth Zola. Drum is also on the board of directors of the American Association on Health and Disability and the External Scientific Advisory Panel for the RRTC on Health Promotion for the Persons with Spinal Cord Injury. He is a past member of the Oregon Council on Developmental Disabilities and past-policy chair of the American Public Health Association’s Disability Specialized Interest Group.

Marilyn Berardinelli, B.S. in the education of deaf and hard of hearing and elementary education, coordinates community engagement efforts to identify and remove barriers to community participation for people with disabilities. She has participated in team efforts to develop a cooperative agreement strategy to build the capacity of entities to improve community access. Berardnelli has coordinated efforts to develop accessibility instruments, including the Outpatient Healthcare Access Profile and the Accessible Parking Assessment Tool, and also coordinates program evaluation efforts for the Northwest Americans with Disabilities Act & Information Technology Center. In addition, she provides technical assistance and training on the Americans with Disabilities Act. Before joining the Center on Community Accessibility, Berardinelli was a vocational consultant with a private return-to-work agency contracting with the Oregon Department of Vocational Rehabilitation.

Willie Horner-Johnson, Ph.D., has expertise in a variety of issues related to the health and well-being of people with disabilities. Her recent research focus has been the relationships between physical activity and health for people with disabilities, and developing a multivariable regression model of predictors of health status for people with disabilities. She has previous research experience in measuring attitudes toward people with disabilities, interventions to improve attitudes, and prevention of abuse and neglect of people with disabilities.

University of Montana
Tom Seekins, Ph.D., has more than 25 years of experience in rehabilitation services and research. The director of Research for the Rural Institute on Disabilities at The University of Montana, he has served on numerous state and national boards, most recently as president of the National Association of Rehabilitation Research and Training Centers. Seekins is particularly interested in issues of rural community development, consumer empowerment, and health promotion for people with disabilities.

Craig Ravesloot, Ph.D., a licensed clinical psychologist, has been researching disability issues funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, and other agencies while at the Research and Training Center on Rural Rehabilitation since 1988. His research interests are the transition process from rehabilitation hospitals to rural independent living, self-employment, and secondary condition prevalence and covariance among people with disabilities living in the community. He specializes in program development and evaluation of health and human services for people with disabilities and directed the development of health promotion and wellness program for adults with physical disabilities, Living Well With a Disability, that has been supported across research projects.

Washington University
David B. Gray, Ph.D., is an associate professor of neurology and occupational therapy and research director of the Research and Training Center on Measuring Community Interdependence. Gray has also directed the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation and National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Recent research projects include developing a new set of measures of participation and environmental factors related to participation by linking them to functional capacity, refining assessment tools developed to track the effects of self-directed personal assistant care and employment on the participation of people with spinal cord injury in major life activities, and examining the effects of new manual or power wheelchairs and seating systems personal on 25 major life activities as perceived by the recipients of the assistance. Gray is a member of the Program Advisory Oversight Committee, Development and Implementation of the Competitive Acquisition Program, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Denise Curl, B.A., manages data in the occupational therapy program at Washington University School of Medicine. She programs project surveys and databases, manages the data entry system, helps develop assessment tools, and assists in website development and maintenance.

Jessica Dashner, Ph.D., currently works in the Social Participation, Environment and Assistive Technology Research Laboratory at Washington University. Her job responsibilities include interviewing, participant recruitment, evaluation development, protocol administration, assistive technology assessments and training, and specific program coordination.

Holly Hollingsworth, Ph.D., a former faculty member of the University of Illinois, the University of Pennsylvania, Saint Louis University and Maryville University, is on the faculty of the Washington University School of Medicine in the occupational therapy program. In addition to providing statistical analyses to a variety of research projects, he serves as a student and faculty resource for statistical methods and application software. Hollingsworth is a member of the American Statistical Association and has reviewed for several statistical research journals including the Journal of Experimental Education, Journal of Educational Statistics, Psychological Bulletin and The American Statistician.

Kerri Morgan, M.S., is the research lab manager for the Social Participation, Environment and Assistive Technology Research Laboratory.  Her job responsibilities include teaching the assistive technology class to second-year graduate occupational therapy students and grant management. In addition, Morgan also performs assistive technology assessments at the Enabling Mobility Center and is a consultant for two local independent living centers where she performs state assessments to determine the eligibility of individuals with disabilities for a personal assistance service program.  Morgan plays competitive quad rugby.

Mike Scheller, B.S., a licensed physical therapy assistant, is a research assistant for multiple projects in the Social Participation Lab at the Washington University School of Medicine Program of Occupational Therapy, as well as the Enabling Mobility Center (EMC). His duties include recruiting and scheduling of participants for interviews and assessments, conducting interviews and assessments, as well as collecting, entering and maintaining subject data records. Other duties include the training, supervision, and mentoring of Occupational Therapy students involved in the social participation lab. In addition, Scheller has organized and guided the annual Adventures for All fishing trips sponsored by the Missouri Department of Conservation at Maramac Springs Trout Park for people with disabilities.