Catherine "Cat" Rooney Howland, M.A.

Project Director, Research and Training Center on Independent Living
The University of Kansas, 1000 Sunnyside Avenue
Room 4089 Dole, Lawrence, KS 66045-7555
Phone: (785) 864-4095, FAX: (785) 864-5063, TTY (785) 864-0706



Professional Biography

Cat Howland is currently project coordinator for a grant from the Center for Public Health Preparedness, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to develop continuing education curricula for health and safety personnel about disasters and people with disabilities. These courses are delivered at no cost on the KS-TRAIN online system. The trainings include videos of instructors’ presentations combined with a PowerPoint presentation. 

Howland has also served as project coordinator for these research grants: Assessing the Impact of Hurricane Katrina on Persons with Disabilities, a grant from National Institute on Disability Rehabilitation Research, and Nobody Left Behind: Preparedness for Persons with Mobility Impairments, a Centers for Disease Control grant. For the Nobody Left Behind project, she authored and co-authored numerous briefing papers, executive summaries, and reports on research, policy development and programs. In addition, she served as an expert advisor to the American Red Cross and Federal Emergency Management Administration on disaster preparedness for persons with disabilities.

Her experience includes 13 years in public health at the state level as a health planner and section chief for the training, credentialing and regulation of five allied health care professions and advisor to the Legislature and Secretary of Health and Environment on consumer protection, and allied health credentialing. Under Howland’s leadership, her section established training and educational programs for various allied health occupations, an automated credentialing process, and an award-winning statewide nurse aide registry, which was noted by the Federal Health and Human Services Department with a Citation for Excellence for Design and Management of the Kansas Nurse Registry.

She previously served as executive director of the Volunteer Connection, a not-for-profit clearinghouse for volunteers, and is an avid volunteer herself.

Research Interests
In addition to emergency preparation for people with disabilities, Howland has research interests in emerging disabilities, pandemic planning, and international human and disability rights photography case studies. Her other interests are the use of photography in ethnographic fieldwork and research, photojournalism, and documentation and collection of evidence.

Selected Publications
                                               
Fox, M. L., White, G. W., Rooney, C., & Rowland, J. (2007). Disaster preparedness and response for persons with mobility impairments: Results from the University of Kansas Nobody Left Behind study. Journal of Disability Policy Studies, 17, 196-205.

Rooney, C. (2007). Nobody Left Behind: Consumer experiences of emergency and disaster. Impact, 20. (1) 4-5.

Rooney, C., & White, G. W.  (2007). Consumer perspective: A narrative analysis of a Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Response Survey from Persons with Mobility Impairments.  Journal of Disability Policy Studies, 17, 206-215.