Berkeley, CA (Aug. 21, 2002) -- Judi Rogers, a disabled mom, activist and author, has earned the nation's highest honor for community health leadership: the 2002 Robert Wood Johnson Community Health Leadership Program award. Rogers is a staff member at Through the Looking Glass, a Berkeley nonprofit organization focusing on families in which an infant, child or parent has a disability. Trained as an occupational therapist, Rogers specializes in developing adaptive babycare equipment as well as pregnancy and birthing issues for women with disabilities. Rogers was selected among 463 nominees for this year's award. She will be honored at a September 24 ceremony in Washington, D.C. where she will receive the $120,000 award -- $105,000 for program enhancement at Through the Looking Glass, and $15,000 as a personal award.

Married for 30 years, Rogers has a 26-year old daughter and 22-year old son. But, like many parents with disabilities of her generation, Rogers grew up without role models of people with disabilities who were parents. There was also no information about how her cerebral palsy would affect her pregnancy or giving birth. Her personal experiences mirrored the substantial lack of information and support for others with disabilities who were parents or who were considering parenting. This motivated Rogers to begin developing resources and information for others including her landmark book about pregnancy and birthing for women with disabilities: Mother to Be: A Guide to Pregnancy and Birth for Women with Disabilities. Interviewing disabled women for her book fueled her commitment to improving healthcare practice. Rogers is completing a revised second edition of her book.

Rogers' personal experiences and professional interests mesh well with Through the Looking Glass (TLG). At the time Rogers joined the staff in 1990, it was a small grass-roots agency occupying a two-room cottage in the back yard of TLG founders Megan and Hal Kirshbaum. Providing early intervention services to families with a disabled parent or child, TLG had a strong commitment to include and emphasize the perspectives of individuals with personal or family disability experience. The agency has since expanded to nearly 40 staff members and pioneered national research and training projects. In 1998, the National Resource Center for Parents with Disabilities was established at TLG, funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, U.S. Department of Education. This National Center provides information, consultation and resources for the nearly 11 million parents with disabilities in the U.S. There is a particularly critical need for expert pregnancy and parenting services and resources, like those Rogers is providing and guiding others to provide.

Rogers has multiple roles at TLG. She provides home-based childbirth education and occasional labor coaching for mothers with developmental disabilities. Rogers is part of a team of staff occupational therapists who work with parents with physical disabilities to develop customized babycare adaptations and strategies which fit the babies' and parents' needs. Rogers also facilitates a monthly support group for parents with disabilities. Through the agency's National Resource Center, Rogers offers technical assistance and training nationally for parents and professionals inquiring about pregnancy, birthing and babycare issues.

As a long-term and valued member of the disability community, Rogers' personal experience with breast cancer led her to advocate for community breast health access for women with disabilities. Indefatigable, she continued to work with area families in the midst of her own chemotherapy and recovery from surgery. On one particular occasion, after losing her hair and wearing a wig, she drove many hours to visit a frightened mother with significant cerebral palsy whose competence was being questioned by children's protective services. The babycare equipment Rogers provided prevented the baby from being removed from this mother.

Rogers has had a vision of people with disabilities fulfilling their dreams about becoming parents. Through her work at TLG, Rogers has served many impoverished families and was profoundly affected by how little they had benefited from resources available to more privileged families coping with disability. She described her own entry into the disability community long ago as "transforming." In her down-to-earth and practical style, Rogers has been on a path of bringing the transforming supports and strengths of the disability community to other people with disabilities, family by family. She never has been able to tolerate the absence of resources for a family. Despite the agency's often limited funding and resources, Rogers has managed to provide families with solutions and a sense of connection. Increasingly, she has influenced health care practice on the local and national level, through her uncanny networking ability and commitment to improved access for women with disabilities.

Rogers has become a community symbol and a model for transforming pain and loss into creative drive and practical solutions. She has brought a positive perspective on disability into innumerable lives, locally and nationally. In her years of providing early intervention to disabled babies and children and their families, Rogers' zest for life conveyed hope for the children's' future. In her childbirth education for parents with cognitive limitations she has pioneered approaches that effectively provide practical support. In her development of babycare adaptations for parents with physical disabilities she has been able to offer ingenious solutions but also her personal struggles and solutions as a parent. Here and in facilitating the support group she is a remarkably accessible peer and a role model.

Perhaps Rogers' most outstanding characteristic is her ability to weave together so many aspects of involvement in the disability and health communities. She has an uncanny networking ability, and she draws from this matrix in order to benefit families and to promote social change. For Judi Rogers there always seems a potential solution to a problem, whether it's babycare by a mother with quadriplegia or inaccessible mammograms. Maybe a lifetime of overcoming obstacles is a habit that's hard to break.

For more information on Through the Looking Glass, please contact (800) 644-2666 (voice), (800) 804-1616 (TTY) or visit their Web site: www.lookingglass.org. For more information on the Robert Wood Johnson Community Health Leadership program, please contact (617) 426-9772 or visit their Web site at www.communityhealthleaders.org