Class of 2008-09 Legal Advocacy Fellow American Diabetes Association 1701 N. Bearegard Street Alexandria, VA 22311 Phone: (800) 676-4065

Profile:

Katharine graduated from Bryn Mawr in 2001.  After graduation, she volunteered as a human rights observer in rural Guatemala and as an intern with the Margarita Magón Women's Assistance Center in Mexico City, an anti-domestic violence organization. After working at the Los Angeles Central American Resource Center and the Florence (Arizona) Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project as a bilingual immigration paralegal assisting domestic violence survivors and immigration detainees, she earned her JD at the George Washington University Law School, graduating with honors in May 2008. During law school, she completed internships with the DC Public Defender Service and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. As a student attorney with DC Law Students in Court, she represented indigent clients in criminal proceedings, serving as the lead trial attorney. She also served as a student representative to the law school's Student/Faculty Public Interest Committee.  Fluent in Spanish, Katharine is committed to ensuring that legal information and resources become more widely accessible and available to the growing Spanish-speaking population of the United States.

As the American Diabetes Association Novo Nordisk Legal Advocacy Fellow, Katharine helps individuals stop diabetes discrimination and obtain the accommodations and assistance they are entitled to by law. Using the ADA method of educate, negotiate, litigate, legislate, she helps elementary and high school students, college students, workers, and prisoners learn about their rights and take action to ensure that these rights are respected. She splits her time between providing direct assistance to people who call the ADA helpline and conducting legal research and writing that is critical to confronting discrimination.  While diabetes strikes males and females equally, women often are the ones who take the lead in providing care to themselves and their family members.  In fact, two-thirds of the individuals Katharine has assisted have been women, including many mothers who are their child’s primary advocate.  In these women’s stories, Katharine hears their additional struggles to manage their need for health care, for support, and for a dignified workplace, that occur because they are women.  For example, one of the most frequent calls for assistance that she gets is related to the implementation of accommodations for children with diabetes. Children with diabetes, under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, are entitled to auxiliary aids and services that will allow them to access a “free appropriate public education.” However, many schools are under the mistaken impression that a student is not eligible for a Section 504 plan unless the student’s ability to learn is impaired.  Therefore they refuse to provide students with the protections that they need to be safe at school.  Much of Katharine’s work involves working with parents so that they understand the law such that they can educate their school.  Moreover, because of the increasing ability of children to participate fully in school, thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act and the IDEA special education laws, more young people with diabetes are able to attend college. While the Association already has well-developed resources for children in elementary school and high school, it does not have a similar program for post-secondary students. Therefore, Katharine is working on an extensive research and writing project to produce documents regarding the rights of college students with diabetes geared at numerous audiences: lawyers, students, parents, and school officials. This will include information about how students with diabetes can access appropriate testing accommodations for standardized tests.  Some of Katharine’s research on this subject was published in the ADA’s Magazine, Diabetes Forecast.  Katharine is also working on a project regarding physical and medical testing requirements of persons with diabetes who have already been hired.  The concern is that individuals with disabilities not be subject to unnecessary medical inquiry based on their diagnosis alone.  Katherine created a website dealing with reasonable accommodation issues in the workplace.  She also created the ADA’s first Spanish discrimination packet in light of the fact that there are 4 million Latinos with diabetes in the United States and the rate of diabetes in the Latino community is significantly higher than in other communities.  Katharine is also working on several projects in regards to the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008.