SusanDouglasMDJD

Summary

• Susan Douglas knows persistence and perseverance. Douglas was 21 when her car skidded off a road. She returned to medical school a paraplegic in less than a year, where she was a trailblazer. In 1996, she began practicing academic neurology at UCLA. Changes in health care and insights from her own medical experiences, moved her toward public policy and a fellowship with the Senate Finance Committee's Healthcare Subcommittee, where she drafted legislation that is law today. She is now on the faculty at UCLA in a health services research program, developing research to study ways to integrate people with chronic illness and disabilities into their communities. Active in community service she fights barriers wherever she finds them. Her own struggles with provisions that block access to genuine independence drive her passion to change policy. She strives to be an effective advocate, thought leader, coalition builder and solution driver for entities that are affected by health care policy, focusing on reducing disparities, ending discrimination, promoting equality of opportunity and employment for underrepresented groups, and civil and human rights. Douglas believes that everyone shares essentially the same daily struggles, victories and defeats, regardless of occupation or social status. “We all benefit when these struggles and outcomes are acknowledged and validated by people in the same boat, fighting the same fight.”