How to Embed a Disability Lens Across Policymaking (and detoxing from the White House as self-care, too!) —feat. Kim Knackstedt

OFF-KILTER with Rebecca Vallas

This week Rebecca sat down with Kim Knackstedt, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, where she serves as director of the Disability Economic Justice Team and director of the Disability Economic Justice Collaborative, both of which launched a little over one year ago in April 2022. Before coming to TCF, Kim served as the first-ever director of disability policy for the White House Domestic Policy Council for the first year of the Biden presidency.

They had a far-ranging conversation about what it looks like to apply disability as a lens across all economic and social policy making in the United States; the story behind the Disability Economic Justice Collaborative, going behind the scenes on the work discussed in the Collaborative’s one-year anniversary event, which aired on Off-Kilter earlier this month; and the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency and what it means for disabled people in the United States.

And continuing with the “self-care is political warfare” throughline from all of this spring’s episodes for the podcast, they also talked about Kim’s ongoing process of detoxing from the “destroy yourself for the work” culture of the White House and Capitol Hill; how she’s been rediscovering self-care in her own life as a leader within the disability community who also lives with chronic illness; and more.

For more:

• Learn more about Kim’s work here and follow her on Twitter @kiknack

• Learn more about the Disability Economic Justice Collaborative here and in its one-year anniversary event—and follow the Collab on Twitter @dejcollab and by signing up for its monthly newsletter

• Here’s the Collaborative’s Disability Economic Justice Policy Framework, showing how to embed disability as a lens across policymaking

• Here’s Kim’s piece (with TCF’s Tara Oakman) on the ending of the public health emergency

• You can find Off-Kilter’s episode with The Kelsey about putting disabled people at the center of housing policy here