President’s Message
Resolutions Rooted in Dignity, Equity, and Action
Steven Perlman, DDS, MScD, DHL (hon), President, People Advocating for Optimal Health (PAOH);
Special Projects Sr., Editor Helen Journal
Luke 14:13-14: But when you give feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.
Civilizations around the world have been celebrating the start of each new year for at least four millennia. Today, most New Year’s festivities begin on December 31 (New Year’s Eve), the last day of the Gregorian calendar, and continue into the early hours of January 1 (New Year’s Day). Common traditions include attending parties, eating special New Year’s foods, making resolutions for the new year, and watching fireworks displays.
HELEN, both Ms. Keller and HELEN Journal, are no different when it comes to making resolutions.
One can imagine that Helen Keller made yearly resolutions to continue to reach for the stars, outsmart her disabilities and strive to be an inspiration for people with and without complex challenges.
At HELEN Journal we like to think of it as a living, breathing entity... and therefore HELEN has both the opportunity and the obligation to share its resolutions.
For the coming year both HELEN and PAOH promise to:
Keep the gloves off when it comes to fighting the fight against indifference, intolerance, and discrimination.
Seek out the best of the best when it comes to recruiting people with disabilities, families, clinicians, researchers, advocates, policy makers, teachers, dreamers, visionaries, and pirates to share their stories, their programs, accomplishments, setbacks and "do overs."
Reach out beyond our borders and invite the global community to share how they found out how to do things differently, and how we may adopt those things and find that indeed they are better.
Continue to read the tea leaves, the tarot cards, the crystal balls, the news, the gossip, and the smoke screens in our attempt to see how our changing political climate can impact on our mission and goals.
Continue our ongoing efforts for 21 years, to get people with IDD their rightful designation as a medically underserved population. We have been working on this for far too long to accomplish this despite overwhelming support from the American Medical and Dental Associations and other professional organizations and legal advocacy groups. In 2026, we will leverage the fact that people with disabilities are already recognized as a Health Disparity Population (HDP) to remedy a long standing gap, Medically Underserved Population (MUP) eligibility hinges on geography, not on immutable characteristics that correlate with underservice. Our strategy is to urge Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to adopt HDP status as a reasonable accommodation under the ADA, Section 504, and Section 1557, creating an HDP based pathway to MUP liked benefits where zip code tests fail. We will pair this with targeted guidance/rulemaking requests, demonstration sites, and standardized disability data capture to ensure implementation is practical, auditable, and scalable.
Continue to advocate for interdisciplinary healthcare, as it takes a village to provide quality healthcare for people with disabilities.
With skyrocketing numbers of individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), we strive to provide our readership with information by leading experts in their respected fields.
As oral health is the number one unmet healthcare need for people with IDD, Pediatric Dentists are the only subspeciality which has imposed an age defined limit abandoning their legacy as a safety net for this population, severely limiting adolescents and adult access to dental care. We will continue to challenge the words “Age Defined.”
Continue to support the Chief Dental Officers of East and Central Africa in their 2019 Addis Abba Declaration to end Infant Oral Mutilation (IOM), which has resulted in the needless deaths of thousands of children, especially those with disabilities.
Support Native Americans with IDD and provide them with a voice as they are often marginalized and face many disparities in healthcare.
Support the craniofacial difference community with equitable, lifelong, oral healthcare that is foundational to dignity, wellbeing, and full participation in society. They have faced countless barriers and HELEN and PAOH need to help provide support to them.
We will continue to recruit, motivate, and cultivate young clinicians and professionals to stand at the forefront of enriching the lives of people with disabilities. Support of Project D.I.M.E. is emerging as a vital initiative.
We will continue to recognize, announce, and promote inclusion as the foundation of achieving optimal health for all populations.
As always, HELEN will continue to ask the hard questions, elevate lived experiences, and insist that equity, dignity, and humanity remain at the center of every conversation we publish.
Our HELEN Staff extends our very best wishes for a Happy and Healthy New Year to all of our readers and supporters.