October 23, Experience

We welcome you to an interactive, participatory experience focused on work disability prevention in Vermont. You will be meeting, listening to, and working with experts in a variety of fields and disciplines including state government, non-profit sector, healthcare, and academia. 

This session builds on a first in-person Summit in June and workgroups’ meetings since then. The work to date has been expansive, inviting divergent thinking and generating ideas. In this session, we will shift our stance to integrating and confirming action steps. Our goal is to walk away with ingredients for a strategic plan that will support cross-sector organizations to work together to reduce work disability in Vermont. 

Outcomes

• Form a shared understanding of the current state of work disability support in Vermont using the consolidated efforts of workgroups
• Identify priorities for improving work disability support in Vermont
• Bring together a strategic plan, including learnings and recommendations, as well as identifying additional Vermont entities who are needed to move this work forward
• Recommit to collective action around work disability

Pre-Work

There are a few documents worthy of review in advance of this meeting on Oct. 23. We summarized the work to date here. The goal of this document is to offer a window into the conversations so far and create a shared starting place for participants who join us on October 23. There will be time to read during the session; however, if you prefer a slow, close review, please read it in advance. Of course, it’s impossible to fully capture live conversations in summaries like this, so please consider this document definitely incomplete and possibly wrong.

Additionally, the full workbook of materials shared at the June Summit meeting can be accessed here as well as this white paper summarizing the landscape of work disability prevalence (and qualifying diagnoses) in Vermont.

• White Paper: “An Update on the Prevalence and Qualifying Diagnoses of Vermonters Receiving Social Security Disability Insurance Benefits“
• Summit Work Group Summary Memo (covers virtual meetings from workgroups between June-Oct)
• Summit Work Group Recommendations Grid (compiled in advance of the October meeting for review across the various working groups)
• October 23 Meeting Slides and Compiled Notes