Annual Montana Youth Transitions and Association of Rehabilitation Conference provides event for RIIC staff to support needs of youth with disabilities in Montana.

Several RIIC staff presented at the Montana Youth Transitions/Montana Association of Rehabilitation Conference in Great Falls, November 14 – 16.  The conference is geared towards youth with disabilities, families, educators, service providers and counselors to connect, collaborate, and learn more about transition planning.

A variety of workshops were offered including, but limited to, the areas of creative employment opportunities, self-advocacy, identifying and developing transition resources, assistive technology, and teaching and developing work readiness and quality IEPs.

Authors: Martin E. Blair, PhD and Kaitlyn P. Ahlers, PhD Candidate

Movin’ On in Montana was a post-secondary education campus-based experience for Pre-ETS-eligible youth. Beginning in 2015, several state and federal funding sources, including funding from the required 15% Pre-ETS set-aside, supported a four-day, three-night on-campus experience for high school students. The overarching purpose was to introduce high school students with disabilities to the college experience and to help students recognize that college (e.g., university or technical college) is a possibility if they choose to pursue postsecondary education.

All of US research project wants to bring precision medicine to every American. But what is precision medicine? Precision medicine is a revolutionary approach to treating and preventing disease that is personalized instead of a one size fits all approach.

By gathering data from 1 million people, our country’s best researchers will be able to develop treatments that are as complex and unique as we are. Not all people are the same. Yet when we visit the doctor all treatments look the same. Why is that? We just don’t have enough information to do it better, until now. Click on the following link for more information on precision medicine and how to enroll in the All of Us research project.

https://allofus.nih.gov/about/about-all-us-research-program

In order for medical research to benefit us, we need to be included in the data that research is based on. This simple idea inspired the All of Us Research Program, the research initiative from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). By gathering health data about one million or more people living in the United States, especially from those historically underrepresented in biomedical research, All of Us will usher in a new era of precision medicine. The goal is to help doctors choose the most effective treatments based on an individual’s background, genetics, and lifestyle. But what does precision medicine look like in real life? What does it look like for Montanans?