The organizers of the 2009 Disability Management Employer Coalition conference in Portland, OR have done a fantastic job. The conference is chock full of excellent speakers and the attendee base is loaded with experts in the field of absence management. On a side note, the Twitter crowd is small but powerful here with folks like Andrea Olson (@pacifdisability), Kim Greive (@CAHRKim), Carol Harnett (@carolharnett), Steve Cyboran (@SCyboran), and Tamara Greenleaf (@mdguidelines). Follow them all if you are so inclined.
The official start of the conference commenced with an amazing speaker, Kirk Bauer who is the founder of the Wounded Warrior Project and more recently, Disabled Sports USA. Kirk is a veteran who sustained a service-related injury resulting in an above-the-knee amputation. As a fiercely competitive guy, he found himself sidelined for the first time in life. However, rather than succumb to the notions of what he was unable to do, Kirk focused on what might still be possible for him to do. As a result, he found a pathway to recovery and created the road map for other wounded veterans and more recently, any disabled person, to find rehabilitation through sports activity.
"If I can do this, I can do anything" became the motto of Disabled Sports USA. DSUSA has over 20 different sporting activities and 75 teaching events across the country where disabled individuals can participate, free of charge (that's right...free!). DSUSA has found that by engaging in physical activities that may have seemed out of reach, disabled individuals are achieving success in all other areas of their life. For example, a recent study conducted by DSUSA and Harris Interactive revealed that individuals participating in DSUSA were twice as likely to return to work than the general population (68% vs. 33%).
The lesson here?...If you are not currently referring your disabled employees/claimants to DSUSA, you should start immediately. Kirk took what could have been a very negative turn in his life and decided to see it as an opportunity to recognize what his abilities were instead, and discovered some pretty amazing things.
