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What does inclusion actually mean for people living with chronic illness and disability?

Chronic illness and disability are often invisible, dynamic, and poorly understood. In this presentation, Jenise Finlay draws on her experiences as a registered nurse, disability and chronic pain researcher, and person living with chronic illness to explore how our assumptions about health, productivity, independence, and disability shape who is able to participate and belong.

Moving beyond an individual or medical understanding of disability, this presentation considers the social and structural barriers that can make education, health care, employment, and community spaces inaccessible. Through research, lived experience, and storytelling, Jenise invites participants to think beyond accommodation as a checklist and toward inclusion as an ongoing practice of listening, flexibility, accessibility, and belonging.

Captioning and ASL Interpretation will be available.

About Speaker

Jenise Finlay (MN, BScN, RN; she/her) is a registered nurse, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar, CIHR Canada Graduate Scholarship (Doctoral) recipient, and PhD candidate in the Social Dimensions of Health at the University of Victoria. She is a senior research assistant at the University of Calgary and president of the Alberta Society for the Promotion of Sexual Health. Her current research explores chronic pain, disability, sexuality, and sexual health using narrative inquiry. Drawing from both her professional expertise and lived experience with chronic illness and disability, Jenise is particularly interested in challenging assumptions about disability and creating more inclusive health care, educational, and community spaces.

About DEAM

October is the National Disability Employment Awareness Month (DEAM). It is an opportunity to raise awareness about the challenges to access and opportunity for a group of individuals who may go unnoticed in ableist organizational and social cultures. Disability is another key dimension of diversity that we must examine as we work towards building an accessible and inclusive campus.
This year, a group of individuals from the university community and beyond (Faculty members, ABC Office, and community representative) came together to organize not one, but a series of events meant to explore the experiences and amplify voices from individuals with disabilities, experts, and community organizations in topics such chronic illness, neurodivergence, disability and inclusivity, accessibility, and others.