Friendship Circle’s Health Ambassadors advocate for accessibility across Pittsburgh

For many individuals with disabilities, even a routine doctor’s appointment can mean navigating ableist biases, inaccessible resources and rising costs. A new Friendship Circle initiative — Health Ambassadors — empowers young people to overcome these barriers one workshop, interview and clinic visit at a time.

The Friendship Circle is a nonprofit organization within the Jewish community that offers young people with a wide range of abilities the opportunity to “be firmly connected in the community through friendships and relationships, access to wellness supports and employment opportunities,” according to the Friendship Circle’s website.

The Friendship Circle’s Health Ambassadors program seeks to uplift the voices of teens with disabilities to advocate for greater accessibility across the healthcare landscape. The program was guided by Dr. Elizabeth Miller, chief of Adolescent Medicine at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.

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The Health Ambassadors initiative comes just two years after the University of Pittsburgh, commissioned by the FISA Foundation, published a report titled “A Far Cry from FAIR.” The report concluded that the disparities across Pittsburgh’s healthcare system “inevitably [led] to unfair differences in health outcomes, unnecessary complications, avoidable suffering, and even death.”

Talia Akiva, teen programming and operations manager at The Beacon, an initiative of the Friendship Circle, said the report confirmed what “people with disabilities already knew.”

“Youth with disabilities are often overlooked. A lot of our health ambassadors were talking about how when they’re in doctor’s appointments, the doctor speaks directly to their parent when they’re fully capable of talking about their own medical history and their own things that they’re going through,” Akiva said. “They have lived experiences that we can pull from that I think are often overlooked [by] doctors and researchers, and so it’s important to actually learn from the people that are being impacted.”

The Health Ambassadors program is comprised of nine teens, parents and recent high school graduates from the Friendship Circle community. The ambassadors began with “learning sessions” at The Beacon, where they gained insight into disability advocacy, healthcare and ongoing research.

They also visited local clinics and interviewed various experts in the field, including a physician assistant and a clinic manager.

“They walked all around thinking about accessibility in all different ways, starting from how they got [to the clinic] and the cost of the bus, and if it was easy to find it, if the doors were big enough for wheelchairs and how someone would get on the bed if they were in a wheelchair,” Akiva said. “They really looked at everything.”

The program culminated in the creation of an evaluation tool that can be used to assess a clinic’s accessibility. Earlier this month, the ambassadors visited the Center for Adolescent and Young Adult Health in Oakland to assess the inclusivity of the clinic’s resources.

Health Ambassador Ekow Opoku-Dakwa noted that while the clinic was already “welcoming,” there were a few accessibility issues that needed to be addressed. He emphasized that the health ambassadors’ “collaborative approach” could help spread awareness and facilitate these changes.

“Young people with disabilities make up a good portion of the medical system and I think [it’s important] to share about their experience in order for them to be more present in the decision-making process,” Opoku-Dakwa said.

Beyond addressing accessibility issues across the Pittsburgh healthcare system, the program also created an opportunity for members of the community to share vital resources with each other. One example that came up within group discussions was the “PH-95 loophole,” which allows individuals under the age of 18 to receive access to Medicaid, regardless of their parents’ income.

“It’s kind of hard to find these resources, and they’re hidden unless you look for them,” Akiva said. “We want to share with our greater Friendship Circle community what our health ambassadors have learned, and allow space for more people to talk about their experiences.”

On June 17, the ambassadors presented their findings at the FISA Foundation Awards. Akiva hopes that the Health Ambassadors community will continue to expand, encompassing a vast range of experiences and perspectives.

“There’s a saying in the disability community — ‘nothing about us without us,’” she said. “We want them to be heard.” PJC

Octavia Liku can be reached at oliku@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.