Thread by @ReadyForMyShot

So with the exciting news today that NWT has 'gone green' on our map, some might be wondering how we are assigning the colours. 🟥🟧🟩

A thread... 1/n

First of all, we have health comms expertise but we are NOT clinicians, academics or policy experts.

We ARE experts on parenting a young man with Ds.

As citizens, we can read publicly posted government policy and interpret it as, well, citizens might do...

2/n

And so we've done just that: read the postings of each province and territory as they relate to prioritizing vaccinations.

Note we *only* assess posted policy.

Guidelines, frameworks and hearsay are unimportant to our kid's health so we give these no weight.

3/n

If the official policy names developmental disability and/or Ds, and DOES NOT limit the priority to group homes (aka 'congregate care' - who comes up with these names??) they get a GREEN 🟩 rating.

Yay NWT!! 🟩

4/n

If they have a vague reference, e.g. BC has the phrase 'Adults with very significant developmental disabilities that increase risk' they are shown as AMBER 🟧.

It is great that BC sees this as important but they are not specific enough to earn the coveted GREEN 🟩 award.

5/n

If the government policy around vaccination does not mention disability at all or only talks about unnamed medical conditions -- or has written too much of a 'word salad' for a citizen to make sense -- then they get the RED -rating-of-shame 🟥!

6/n

(Note that these colours are non-political. Yes they map to three major political parties, but so do traffic lights!)

7/n

So that's the method. We reassess ratings as new information comes available and make updates to our status page readyformyshot.ca/status.

If you are a gov't or health official reading this and disagree with your score, my DMs are open!

/fin

#readyformyshot
#DownSyndrome

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