ThisAbled talks to Amelia Davis, Board President of MS Friends.Org

Amelia Davis believes in people's abilities to overcome challenges and the importance of helping yourself, by helping others. As a person with a disability she understands struggle and uncertainty, but she breathes photography and art. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1998, Amelia triumphed as a patient advocate and began speaking to the newly diagnosed about living and working with a chronic illness. As Board President of MS Friends, she is constant about her message for greater support service for people with chronic illnesses.

Davis is an award winning photographer and author. For over 15 years, Amelia Davis Photography has been successfully blending fine art and portrait photography to help the viewer deal with life's realities head-on. Since then, Amelia has shown her work in fine art galleries, magazines, textbooks, universities, at medical symposia, and it is featured in private collections.

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As an author, Amelia's current book, Faces of Osteoporosis, which was commissioned by the State of California, received a Silver Award for Excellence in Public Health Communications at the National Public Health Information Coalition's (NPHIC) annual meeting in 2006. Faces of Osteoporosis was recognized in the category of out-sourced print and graphic specialty products.

Her first book, The First Look, about breast cancer survivors has received The Sixteen Annual Susan Koppelman Award for editing, and was selected by the AAUP Book and Jacket Show as one of the best-designed books of 2000. Amelia's second book, My Story: A Photographic Essay on Life with Multiple Sclerosis was a very personal look in words and pictures at multiple sclerosis.

Amelia has been a guest speaker at various fundraisers for both MS and breast cancer and has appeared on numerous TV and radio shows, including PBS's Forum. She was also asked by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society to speak at their Leadership Conference in 2004. For her outstanding work as an MS patient advocate who has made an impact on the lives of those living with MS, Amelia was presented with the MS Achievement Award 2006 at the Dinner of Champions by the Northern California Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

ThisAbled talks to Dr. Wise Young about Stem Cells, Research, and Advocacy

Doctor Wise at age 58 appears to be in a race to bring the issue of stem cell research to the masses. In fact, his career has been based in the world of medical research for the cure of spinal cord injury and other diseases. Currently, Dr. Young is head of the W.M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. In that role he has had his shares of struggles and successes, from the almost certain building of a Stem Cell Research Center in New Jersey, to the eventual defeat of funding for the center by States voters through a referendum.


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The 53 to 47 percent defeat at the ballot box for a new Stem Cell center was unexpected by many politicians, researchers and people with disabilities, who rallied around the idea. Dr. Young, seems to peer right through you when he talks about the small margin of voters which turned against Question 2., handing the State yet another push back in its efforts to be an international player in stem cell research.
The one thing that will strike anyone who talks to someone who CNN voted “Best & Brightest” and who co-discovered, that by injecting the spinal cord with a high dose of the steroid within eight hours of injury, provides a twenty percent greater chance of recovering some function, is his humility. Dr. Young, talks about the issue of stem cell research to anyone who will listen. He did it in a backyard full of fifty people a few years ago, when he talked to people with disabilities, family and other professionals about the progress of stem cell research. In addition, as a speaker at the Central Jersey Spinal Cord dinner a few weeks ago, he again talked about the need for a Center in New Jersey and North East Region to over 400 people. Fresh from a trip to China, where he works with other stem cell researchers, he stated that we (New Jersey) have lost eight years, and we should not be getting on a plane to China when we can make discoveries here.
The following podcast is my interview with Dr. Young on a variety of issues. Please feel free to use our forum to leave comments or post on the podcast.

ThisAbled welcomes Ms. Elizabeth Davis as a partner and resource on the issue of emergency preparedness and people with disabilities.

Elizabeth Davis is an internationally-recognized and published expert in the fields of emergency management and special needs planning. A leader in the development and implementation of special needs policies and protocols, Ms. Davis brings more than fifteen years of passion, dedication, experience, and accomplishments to her work. It was in 2001 that Ms. Davis decided to create EAD & Associates, a New York-based emergency management consultancy with a holistic client-centric approach to providing quality real-world solutions.

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With a unique expertise and focus on special needs and human services issues, the EAD team is a proven leader in the field of emergency management. This first podcast is one of a series that we are working on with Ms. Davis and her group. If you have questions for Ms. Davis, please post them in the Forum Section of this website, http://www.thisabled.com/forum/ under the Emergency Preparedness for PWD forum.