In early 2022, the Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health (PRCH) and Yale Latino Recovery Colectivo created the Disability Lived Experience Action Network (D-LEAN).
The grant, awarded by the CT Council of Developmental Disabilities, aimed to engage and learn from Black/African American and Latino/Latine people with disabilities about their needs, experiences, and ways to engage and involve other individuals and families with disabilities.
In year one, we developed a series of seven participatory community conversations to promote advocacy, activism, and self-determination. The adaptation of the concept of citizenship, the 5Rs, and belonging created by Dr. Michael Rowe allowed the D-LEAN to collect data on the themes of rights, roles, resources, responsibilities, and relationships to frame ways that a sense of community belonging is essential to addressing the needs of Black and Latine individuals with disabilities and their family members.
In year two, we developed a co-designed culturally responsive brief education curriculum that can be delivered by current and emerging disability leaders and people in the community. We used a participatory model, allowing people with lived experience and family members to drive and co-design the curriculum.
In year three, we propose piloting training to evaluate, refine, and optimize the culturally responsive guide through participatory methods. We evaluate all guide components to ensure that the guide is fully accessible and has friendly English, Spanish, and Portuguese language. The trainer training will take place at PRCH during the month of May.
The guide and the training were developed to facilitate community participatory conversations to increase engagement in self-advocacy, self-determination, allyship, and activism. They will also help community members organize community meetings to discuss and inform people about their rights.
The innovation of this intervention is to offer a tool that can be used individually as a self-assessment or collectively to increase the number of Black and Latine community leaders.
Staff:
PI: Chyrell Bellamy
Project manager: Graziela Reis
Training director: Maria Restrepo-Toro
Data analysis: Mark Costa and Luz Ocasio
Peer leader: Kimberly Guy