Translating Findings and Products on Community Life Engagement into Practice

2026

Social isolation is an increasingly common problem here in the United States and has broad societal and individual implications Isolation from community life is particularly problematic among people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Despite an ongoing and broad policy focus on changing supports and services to better integrate people with IDD in their communities, the disability service system continues to isolate and segregate rather than connecting people to their communities. We have been conducting a 20+ year line of research to investigate how services can better lead to community life engagement (CLE), that is, access to and participation in the community as part of a meaningful day. The goal of the project is to use knowledge translation (KT) strategies to promote use of these tools by service providers, resulting in increased CLE of people with IDD. This project accomplishes this through three interrelated and complementary utilization activities: (1) establishing a National Community of Practice on Community Life Engagement, (2) conducting a "lunch and learn" webinar series for providers to learn from each other's successes in using the tools through storytelling; and (3) fielding an e-newsletter using micro-learning strategies. We will disseminate our strategies and lessons learned through publication of a Community of Practice Implementation Guide, up to three Engage! Briefs, a peer reviewed manuscript, at least two conference presentations, expansion of the CLE Toolkit website, and social media presence. This work is being accomplished by a partnership between the Institute on Disability at UNH (IOD), the Institute for Community Inclusion at UMass Boston (ICI), and the American Network of Community Options and Resources (ANCOR), and guided by an advisory group that includes service providers, people with IDD, and other CLE experts. We will use multiple evaluation mechanisms to assess progress on our plan of operations and achievement of our intended outcomes and expected impacts, and those evaluation findings will be shared in our dissemination activities so others can learn from and replicate our KT activities.

Developmental Disabilities, Community life engagement

Performing Research or Evaluation, Developing & Disseminating Information, Continuing Education/Community Training

Employment-Related Activities, Recreation-Related Activities, Quality of Life, Other

Professionals and Para-Professionals

Disadvantaged Circumstances

National

N/A