The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Improve the Health and Wellness of Persons with Disabilities

Fifteen years ago today, President George Herbert Walker Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law. It was a groundbreaking statute then. It still is today.

With the stroke of a pen, President Bush opened doors – sometimes literally – for persons with disabilities as they had never been opened before.

It began America’s education about the lives, needs, challenges and triumphs of persons with disabilities. And, at the same time, it created a new life of freedom for persons with disabilities.

Soon after he was elected the Nation’s 43rd President, George W. Bush launched the New Freedom Initiative that emphasizes integrated community-based services for persons with disabilities.

It’s really about valuing the hopes, promise, and purpose inherent in every child, woman and man with a disability throughout their life spans.

That promise and hope is something I saw in the eyes of my first young cancer patient with a disability; and I saw it in the eyes of the young men returned from war whose lives we helped rebuild with prosthetic arms and legs.

And that promise and hope is what this wonderful and important Surgeon General’s Call to Action is about for all people with disabilities not only for today but for all the future tomorrows.

Because health is for all of us – whether we have a disability or not.

I want to thank Secretary Leavitt for his leadership and dedication to ensuring that the health of persons with disabilities is an integral part of the work we do at the Department of Health and Human Services.

I want to thank Surgeon General Carmona for his sensitivity in bringing the challenges and opportunities in health and wellness that persons with disabilities face every day to public attention through his Call to Action.

It took a team of many people who dedicated time, energy, creativity and commitment to bring The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to the Nation today. And that team is here today:

• Assistant Surgeon General Dr. Kenneth Moritsugu
• My Deputy Director Eileen Elias and Dr. Ed Brann of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Teddi Fine of my office and JoAnn Thierry of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who served as the Call to Action’s scientific writers
• And the staff across the Department of Health and Human Services who partnered with us as members of the Department’s New Freedom Initiative Health Subcommittee.

Above all, the Surgeon General’s Call to Action is the result of the voices and the partnership of persons with disabilities themselves – such as Juliette Rizzo and Ollie Cantos who are here today – and 54 million others around the country.

Believe me, as a physician who’s been working in the field of disability for more than half a century, people with disabilities aren’t different from everyone else.

People with disabilities ARE all of us at some time in our lives. If you think the Surgeon General’s Call to Action doesn’t affect you today, it may well affect you, or someone you love or someone you know, tomorrow.

Each one of us has a role to play in keeping this message alive, that , with good health, persons with disabilities can learn, can work, can love, can live long, productive and active lives.

We must learn to recognize the abilities of persons with disabilities, and we need to make sure we treat them as active members of our society.

It’s a call we all must hear and we all must answer.

Last revised: January 10, 2007