300 - COVID-19 Vaccines and People with Disabilities
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 21 April 2021
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
61 million Americans have a disability yet most haven't been prioritized for COVID-19 vaccines. And while eligibility has opened up across the nation, there remain significant barriers for people with disabilities to get appointments. Maria Town, President and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities talks with Stephanie Desmon about how COVID has exacerbated longstanding gaps in health equity for people with disabilities, and also some silver linings of the pandemic that she hopes will remain.
KEYWORDS: vaccine distribution; telemedicine; healthcare infrastructure
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 3, a Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:12.3 | I'm Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former secretary of Maryland's Health Department. |
| 0:19.6 | Our goal is to bring scientific evidence |
| 0:22.4 | and experience to the public health news of the day through informative interviews with scientists, |
| 0:27.8 | community leaders, policy experts, public health officials, clinicians, and more. If you have ideas |
| 0:34.4 | or questions for us to cover, please email us at public health question |
| 0:38.7 | at jhh.edu. |
| 0:41.1 | That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:47.3 | Today, Stephanie Desmond talks to Maria Town, president and CEO, the American Association |
| 0:53.1 | of People with Disabilities, about the many |
| 0:55.5 | unique challenges faced by the disability community during the COVID-19 pandemic. |
| 1:01.5 | Let's listen. |
| 1:02.7 | Maria Town, thanks so much for joining me. |
| 1:04.8 | Thank you for having me. |
| 1:05.8 | I'm delighted to be here. |
| 1:07.1 | So you are the president and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities. |
| 1:12.9 | And I'd love it if you could just tell our listeners a little about your organization. |
| 1:16.9 | That's right. So the American Association of People with Disabilities, or AAPD, is a national cross-disability civil rights organization that works to build the economic and political power |
| 1:29.7 | of the disability community across the country. Very importantly, AAPD is a disability-led organization. |
| 1:37.2 | So often, organizations that work on disability are not led by disabled people themselves. |
| 1:43.6 | I am disabled, our staff are people with disabilities. |
| 1:46.7 | Our board is majority people with disabilities. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.