Delaware public health officials are planning to hold weekend drive-through vaccination events at Division of Motor Vehicles facilities to inoculate all health care workers who have not yet received a Covid-19 vaccine by the end of January. Several pharmacies are also about to start offering vaccinations. Current state outreach focuses on home health professionals, staff at dialysis centers and direct support professionals.
Turn the Page SLPs, an organization created by a 2020 graduate of UD’s speech-language pathology program, is donating books with more diverse characters to speech-language pathologists across Delaware. The idea came from research founder Sierrah Harris conducted as a student, which revealed that three-quarters of children’s books published featured only white people or animals as characters.
Money Follows the Person, a Medicaid program that supports people with disabilities readjusting to community living after leaving institutions, has been renewed for three years. This marks the first time since 2016 that the program has guaranteed funding for more than a year.
The president of the state teacher’s union and other educators expressed concern about the return to hybrid learning – a combination of in-class and remote instruction – after a winter break during which Covid cases surged. However, Gov. Carney and state health officials have said that contact tracing reveals minimal spread of Covid in schools, a finding that aligns with a growing body of research on the effectiveness of masks and social distancing in schools.
A bipartisan bill named for disability advocate Charlotte Woodward has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives that would prohibit medical professionals from considering disability when determining which patients receive organ transplants. Woodward, who has Down syndrome, has pushed for federal legislation mandating transplant equity since she received a heart transplant nine years ago. Currently, 15 states, including Delaware, have laws barring transplant discrimination.
