Launching Into Adulthood: An Integrated Response to Support Transition of Youth with Chronic Health Conditions and Disabilities

As adolescents with disabilities or chronic health conditions reach adulthood, they face complex challenges related to employment, education, housing, health care, and community participation. Coordinated, well-organized transition services could make all the difference&;and this cutting-edge volume gives decision-makers a clear vision to work toward as they reform today's fragmented system.

Research scientist Donald Lollar gathers the best, most current thinking on transition from a multidisciplinary team of experts. Together, they make research-based recommendations that will streamline access to services, meet young people's individual needs, and improve long-term outcomes. Readers will discover which kinds of policy changes and program initiatives could help adolescents with a range of disabilities

• maintain continuous, high-quality medical care and health insurance as they enter adulthood
• prepare for every aspect of meaningful employment, from determining career goals to fulfilling job requirements
• choose, secure, and keep an affordable and accessible home
• build the skills they need to use local transportation options as independently as possible
• participate fully in community activities, with the help of both formal and informal supports

Readers will get valuable insight on improving the various systems with fragmented and uncoordinated programs&;health, education, labor, housing, transportation. And because chapters are coauthored by experts on adolescents and experts on adult disability, readers will have a balanced, cohesive perspective that will help them improve both sides of transition.

With this map for program and policy change close at hand, program developers will take confident steps toward their ultimate goal: a seamlessly integrated transition system that helps young adults with disabilities lead successful, self-determined adult lives.

Donald Lollar, Ed.D., is Director of the Oregon Institute on Disability & Development at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU)'s Child Development and Rehabilitation Center. Prior to his position at OHSU, Dr. Lollar was Senior Research Scientist, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. Lollar received his doctorate in rehabilitation counseling from Indiana University in 1971. After 25 years of clinical practice, Dr. Lollar spent 13 years at CDC working on public health science and programs to improve the health and well-being of people with disabilities, with special emphasis on children, adolescents, and their families. He has published widely in the areas of disability, public health, and youth with disabilities. Dr. Lollar has also been a member of the international task force that developed the International Classification of Function, Disability and Health&;Children and Youth Version (ICF-CY) for the World Health Organization.

David R. Johnson, Ph.D.,

is Professor and Director of the Institute on Community Integration at the College of Education and Human Development, University of Minnesota.