Richmond, VA – The Virginia Board for People with Disabilities (VBPD) is pleased to announce that it recently awarded a $149,921 grant to George Mason University for a project titled, Mapping Information Ecology: Understanding the Fragmentation of Disability Service Information. This project aims to identify information management strategies to make it easier for people with disabilities to access usable, understandable, and reliable information about disability services and supports.
“The Board is excited to collaborate with George Mason University on this information ecology mapping project. It is an exciting opportunity to continue the work started by the Board’s 2022 Assessment of Information Access for People with Disabilities and their Family Members. We have the highest confidence in GMU and its collaborator to take a deeper dive into Virginia’s management of disability services information and develop actionable recommendations to allow organizations and agencies to better manage the flow of disability service information,” said Teri Morgan, the Board’s Executive Director.
GMU’s Director of its Community Informatics Lab, Dr. Myeong Lee, said, “The project’s goals are to pinpoint the main issues in managing disability information in Virginia and create a foundation for simplifying access to essential resources for people with disabilities and their families. This research will result in practical recommendations that can greatly improve the lives of those with disabilities by making crucial information easier to access.
“By focusing on Medicaid services, the research team will combine interviews and computational network analysis methods to explore the reasons behind the uneven and sometimes incomplete availability of disability service information across organizations and websites. We will also study how the nature of disability information managed by diverse organizations in Virginia impacts the challenges faced by individuals navigating multiple systems,” Dr. Lee added.
