Six months into his gastroenterology fellowship, Peter Poullos, MD (he/him/his) experienced a spinal cord injury and became paralyzed from the neck down. He decided to retrain in radiology to better align with his disability needs, coming to Stanford University in 2004 for his residency.
In 2009, he joined the faculty at Stanford and is now a Clinical Associate Professor of Radiology and Gastroenterology and has worked to increase their disability advocacy and inclusion efforts. Founding the Stanford Medicine Alliance for Disability Inclusion and Equity, Dr. Poullos is a champion of equity, both in the classroom and in clinical practice.
In celebration of Disability Awareness Month, Dr. Poullos shares how this work is changing the education and medical fields — as well as what he hopes to see change in the future.
Check out these resources to help your solution or organization center disability advocacy.
In Full Health (IFH): As the founder and Co-Chair of the Stanford Medicine Alliance for Disability Inclusion and Equity — what motivated you to start this coalition?
Dr. Peter Poullos: After my injury, over time and through rehab, I regained the ability to walk and use my arms in a limited fashion, but I am still very much disabled from that injury. At the time, I had done some one-off work with disability mentoring with others who reached out to me who had spinal cord injuries or disabilities that wanted to do radiology. Nothing huge or formal — I was just trying to put the pieces of my life back together and build a career.
In 2018, as a member of the faculty Senate Subcommittee on Diversity, I proposed that we do a disability project for the upcoming year. As the person with lived experience with disability, I was the natural choice to lead the project. Through that committee, we decided to form an affinity group, which became the Stanford Medical Abilities Coalition and then later the Stanford Medicine Alliance for Disability Inclusion and Equity (SMADIE).
I had a pretty limited view of disability at the time I started this. I have been treated very well in my residency and in my faculty position in terms of them accommodating me, my schedule, and procedural requirements. So, I really didn’t have a great idea of how Stanford was for other disabled people.
I got introduced to the Medical Students with Disability and Chronic Illness, (MSDCI) group, and they told me about disability inclusion at Stanford. The experiences and discriminatory practices they had faced were alarming and I was frankly outraged at the way I saw other people being treated. There was this deep sense of injustice, unfairness, and unequal treatment.
I always say I’m leading from behind. It is the students who are really at the forefront of these initiatives and often act as a sort of lighthouse for our work.
IFH: How has your disability advocacy and accessibility work influenced your teaching philosophy?
Dr. Peter Poullos: From a teaching perspective, I try to utilize principles of universal design in my coursework, which includes providing sign language interpretation and captions, as well as providing content ahead of time. This is especially beneficial for people with learning disabilities or who are blind or deaf.
It’s also the little things, like making sure the font is accessible at the contrast between the slide background and the color of the font is appropriate for people with color blindness. It’s also just asking people in registration, what their access needs are so we can proactively meet them.
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SUBSCRIBEIFH: What successes have the Stanford Medicine Alliance for Disability Inclusion and Equity seen since its founding?
Dr. Peter Poullos: One of our major accomplishments so far has been our annual conference. This April will be our 4th Annual Conference on Disability in Healthcare and Medicine. This conference has attracted over a thousand attendees from 39 different countries.
It’s so exciting to be building a national coalition and to witness the conversations happening at the conference. There is this incredible thirst for this information, especially from medical students.
Another major success is our mentorship program. It’s called the Disability Mutual Mentorship Program in Medicine. We have monthly meetings to get to know each other, support one another, and learn about new topics together. The feedback that we’ve received from students has been incredibly positive. Feedback like, “I would’ve dropped out of medicine if it weren’t for the support that I was given by the mentorship program or the coalition.” I’m just really proud of that.
There’s really no way to root out or solve discrimination without rooting out ableism. That’s a difficult problem to tackle because things are very complex and ingrained. But we try to be guided by principles of disability justice, critical disability studies, and crip theory to push the institution forward.
Expressing Gratitude
Dr. Lisa Meeks from the University of Michigan and Dr. Neera Jane from the University of Auckland in New Zealand have both been instrumental in my education. I would also like to thank Ken Sutha, who is my co-chair of SMADIE and my partner in crime. Also to all of the people at Stanford who are working hard for disability inclusion — we are all in this together.
Peter Poullos, MD
Clinical Associate Professor of Radiology, Stanford University
IFH: What is your advice for health solution developers when designing health solutions for people with disabilities? How can developers take that advice beyond Disability Awareness Month?
Dr. Peter Poullos: I think the key is to involve people with disabilities from the very beginning. Often the perspectives and needs of people with disabilities are only considered or built in at the very end after a product has already been created. It’s almost like an afterthought.
It’s much harder to implement solutions or to solve problems after the fact than to proactively think about them and incorporate them into the design itself. It’s really important to include people who are blind and have other sensory disabilities in the process from the very start.
It’s also important to remember that a software product or a solution is not a static thing, and there are updates and upgrades that have to be provided to make sure that you’re continuing to serve people with and without disabilities.
If you’re not designing with accessibility in mind from the start, you’re talking about marginalizing and alienating an entire group of people. And you’re not just making design decisions and accommodations for “the most disabled people” or a couple of people who might need it. In reality, there are so many people that can benefit from better accessibility being built into these products — including people who are not disabled or who are not currently disabled.
There’s a saying in the disability community, “Nothing about us without us.” And that means that disabled people have to be incorporated from the start.
IFH: What do you hope to see change when it comes to how people view disability — especially in medicine?
Dr. Peter Poullos: There are a lot of things that we can do in medicine to improve access for people with disabilities. I think one is just normalizing the fact that disability exists and that people with disabilities are in medicine.
It’s also about normalizing the idea that disability isn’t a problem to be solved — it’s something to be sought after and celebrated for the insights that it can bring to our field. Disabled physicians and medical students bring something so unique to the field from their dual role as both patient and provider. We need to shift our mindset from simply problem-solving towards recruitment and retention of individuals with disabilities in medicine and recognizing the high value that they bring to the field.
I think that it’s really important for disability organizations to work with other diverse organizations to organize and work together to fight the systems of oppression that affect all of us, whether it be Black or queer groups or disabled. Martin Luther King Jr. said that an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. So, it’s critical that we build community across disability groups and across diversity groups to fight together to improve access for both providers and for our patients.
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