I am pleased to share with you the inaugural CEDHARS newsletter. Realizing how busy we all are, the purpose of one more email needs a strong justification; we have several.

First, people with disability have long been ignored by the mainstream research community in the U.S. and in most places across the world. While we are very proud of the research conducted at UAB, the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion means that we can no longer exclude people with disabilities from our ongoing research programs. Including people with disabilities across all areas of research will put UAB in a good position to support CEDHARS researchers who have an interest in disability but need the expertise of scientists working in cutting-edge areas of precision medicine to ensure that the newest and latest developments are tested on people with disabilities now versus sometime in the distant future.

Second, when we speak of diversity, equity and inclusion, we must not forget that this involves all voices ‘at the table,’ including people with disabilities. CEDHARS is here to support researchers across campus who are interested in becoming more inclusive. Rather than using disability as an exclusion criterion, consider working with a CEDHARS faculty affiliate to adapt the tool, methodology or intervention for a subgroup of people with disability. Adaptation vs. reinvention will allow parallel tracks of research to occur, blending the best science with the best researchers interested in resolving health problems among both groups.

Third, in the same way that NIH requires justification for excluding women and minorities in any area of research, we want to set the bar for NIH and other academic institutions that people with disabilities should be a third category. No one with a disability should be excluded solely because they have a disability, as there are adaptations that can be used to promote their inclusion. This will ensure that research findings are generalizable to people with disability and will result in federally sponsored guidelines and recommendations for health protection that represent all citizens.

Finally, we want UAB to be the exemplar for NIH and other institutions across the U.S. in this new and emerging area of inclusion science. UAB is known for its impressive scientific record, so let this be another accolade that we can all be very proud of, a center of engagement in disability and health that supports all research for all citizens.

Thank you for making it this far into the inaugural newsletter, and we hope that the groundbreaking research at CEDHARS that we plan to share through this newsletter will continue to justify you coming back.