Doshon Hunley, with UMKC’s Institute for Human Development, joined the panel for the closing plenary session of the Administration for Community Living (ACL) Office of Healthcare Information and Counseling Conference in August. Hunley serves as a Family Information Specialist for the Missouri Family to Family (MoF2F) program at UMKC’s Institute for Human Development. Missouri Family to Family is a free statewide resource center staffed by experts with lived experience who provide tools, resources, training, and peer support to people with disabilities, their families, and supporters.

Hunley focused on the importance of partnering with University Centers of Excellence for Development Disabilities (UCEDDs) and developmental disability networks such as No Wrong Door, a powerful network built to support individuals needing long-term care. Many family-to-family programs are located with UCEDDS or Parent Training and Information centers. Both serve as information sources for parents of children with disabilities, which allows them to provide coordinated services that meet medical, educational, and other needs for children and youth with special health care needs.

Hunley also discussed the Medicare Improvement for Patients & Providers Act (MIPPA), a multi-faceted piece of legislation that allocates federal funding to help low-income Medicare beneficiaries apply for programs that make Medicare affordable. She noted that the MoF2F program at Missouri’s UCEDD has extensive experience in supporting families and individuals with disabilities based on the group’s own lived experience offering personalized resources not cookie cutter lists.

“We understand how to support a mom who is scared about how Medicare access will affect her 34-year-old child’s waiver,” she explained. “We have the ability to simplify complex information and make it accessible.”

The panel’s topic, “Supporting Medicare-Medicaid Dually Eligible Beneficiaries and Considerations for People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities,” included panelists Melissa Simpson (ACL); Kim Glaun and Chris DeYoung (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Medicare-Medicaid Coordination Office); Mary McGeary (Director, New Jersey State Health Insurance Assistance Program); and Teja Stokes (National Association of State Directors of Developmental Disabilities Services).