Seasoned Disability Rights Advocate Joins UCP

Seasoned Disability Rights Advocate Joins UCP

Connie Garner is the new executive vice president for public policy at United Cerebral Palsy (UCP), an international service provider and advocate for children and adults with a spectrum of disabilities.

UCP has charged Garner with creating a fresh approach to public policy and advocacy that combines traditional approaches on the federal level, with grassroots work at the state level. She is responsible for creating tools so that self-advocates have stronger voices within their own communities.

“We are thrilled to welcome someone with Connie’s knowledge and experience to create a new policy operation for UCP,” said Stephen Bennett, UCP’s president and CEO.

“She has been at the center of some of the most important legislative advances for people with disabilities for more than two decades. She brings those experiences plus her sensibility as a nurse and a mother of a child with a disability to UCP, as she helps us craft the strongest possible advocacy platform for people with disabilities in the nation.”

Over the past year, Garner has served UCP as a consultant, helping to create a new strategic plan for the nonprofit’s work in the policy and advocacy arena.

“I have had the privilege of visiting with UCP affiliates across the nation, listening to the ways that laws, regulations and health care systems are impacting people with disabilities in communities across America,” she said. “UCP is unique, with its focus on helping people with disabilities and their families transition through major moments in life.”

Garner previously held a number of prominent positions, including policy director for Disability and Special Populations for the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP), where she served Chairman Harkin, Senator Dodd, and the late Senator Kennedy.

In that capacity, she was the lead Democratic Committee architect for the CLASS Act, the major long-term care legislation that is part of health care reform; as well as the enactment of the landmark Mental Health Parity Act 2008; the 2006 and 2009 reauthorizations of the $2 billion Ryan White CARE Act; the Family Opportunity Act of 2006 and the 2005 reauthorization of Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the Special Education Law; and the 1999 Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act.

Garner once served in the US Department of Education as director of the Federal Interagency Coordinating Council for Children with Disabilities, and the Secretary of Education’s principal liaison on all interagency health care matters, including health care reform.

Prior to her work with the federal government, she provided clinical nurse specialist services in both urban and rural public health settings, and in inpatient hospital settings, managing several large maternal-child health inpatient hospital units in both Philadelphia and the Washington, DC area. She continues to work as a practicing nurse on a monthly basis.

Garner has a B.S. and an M.S. in nursing, an Ed.S. in special education, and her doctoral work is in both health and education public policy. She is certified as a pediatric and neonatal nurse practitioner.

www.ucp.org

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