December 14, 2022
CEPR has long viewed disability as an economic issue of fundamental importance. This past year CEPR launched a project to expand and deepen our work along these lines. As part of a groundbreaking initiative called the Disability Economic Justice Collaborative (DEJC). CEPR joined over 20 leading disability advocacy organizations and top research organizations with a collective commitment to break the persistent link between disability and poverty, and achieve economic justice for disabled people in the US.
To help launch DEJC, CEPR researchers Hayley Brown, Julie Cai, and Shawn Fremstad coauthored a report with The Century Foundation, Economic Justice Is Disability Justice, which lays out the breadth and depth of economic injustice experienced by people with disabilities. In July, we released our first Disability and Economic Justice Chartbook, a collection of tables and figures on the current state of disability economic justice. CEPR also produced reports on the benefits of union membership for disabled workers as well as a report that looked at how restrictions on reproductive rights hurt workers with disabilities.
Over the past several months, CEPR has put a spotlight on Long COVID and related complex chronic conditions. In September, we partnered with the Congressional Progressive Caucus Center (CPCC) to produce a comprehensive report on the impacts of Long COVID and the measures the federal government should be taking to address them. In a subsequent report, The Long Reach of Long COVID, we used new federal data to document that at Least 4.4 million adults are currently disabled by Long COVID.
In November, CEPR and CPCC held an online event to highlight these reports as well as the perspectives of leading patient advocates and researchers on Long COVID and other complex, chronic conditions. Over 300 people registered for the event, making it our biggest online event to date and demonstrating the level of interest in what has an underreported issue.
