 Major sponsors for Ableton on Air include Green Mountain Support Services, empowering people with disabilities to live home in the community, Washington County Mental Health, where hope and support come together. Media sponsors for Ableton on Air include Park Chester Times, Muslim Community Report, WWW, this is the Bronx.info, Associated Press Media Editors, New York Power Online Newspaper, U.S. Press Corps Domestic and International, Anchor FM and Spotify. Partners for Ableton on Air include Yachad of New York and New England where everyone belongs, the Orthodox Union, the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired of Vermont, the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity and Montpelier Sustainable Coalition, Montpelier Medical Center of the Bronx, Rose of Kennedy Center of Bronx, New York, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of the Bronx. Ableton on Air has been seen in the following publications, Park Chester Times, WWW, this is the Bronx.com, New York Power Online Newspaper, Muslim Community Report, WWW.H.com and the Montpelier Bridge. Ableton on Air is part of the following organizations, the National Academy of Television, Arts and Sciences, Boston, New England Chapter and the Society of Professional Journalists. Welcome to this edition of Ableton on Air, the one and only program that focuses on the needs, concerns and achievements of the different label. I've been your host, Lauren Seiler. On this edition today, while the guest is coming, we would like to focus on all brains belong, VT, All Brains Belong Vermont is a neuro-inclusive primary care and community organization. And we would like to thank our sponsors. We would like to thank our sponsors, Washington County Mental Health, Green Mountain Support Services and many others, including the partnerships of today's program, the partnerships of All Brains Belong Vermont, a neuro-inclusive primary care and community organization. We would also like to thank the Association for the Blind Vermont, the Division for the Blind Vermont and many, many other organizations, also including Higher Ability Vermont. We would like to welcome Dr. Melissa Houser, Executive Director of All Brains Belong Vermont. Welcome to Ableton on Air. Hello, it's great to be here. Okay, what are the missions and goals of All Brains Belong Vermont? Absolutely. So All Brains Belong is a nonprofit 501c3 organization here in Montpelier that uses principles of universal design. I'll talk about that in a minute. Universal design to provide health care and community connection. Our organization was formed to celebrate neurodiversity, which refers to all of the many ways our brains as humans think, learn and communicate. We all have different brains that all do these things differently. And in order to have a truly inclusive community, we need to have health care, education, community connection offered in different ways. So that everyone can access all of these things in the way that works best for their brain. What exactly do you mean by? Because people learn, like you said, people learn differently. Example, when I was growing up, I was in special education for part of the time and then the other part of the time I was mainstream, you know, because they wanted to be inclusive with education. So what exactly do you mean by all inclusive and other people learn differently? So to me, inclusion means that people feel that they belong. So in order for people to feel like they belong, we need to feel safe and we feel need to feel connected. So if there is a default, like a cookie-cuttered way that something is offered or expected, if you have the kind of brain that does that thing differently, you're going to feel disconnected. You're going to feel like there's a main way, a default way, and then there's you. So anytime there's a default, everybody else is othered. And when people feel othered, they do not feel included. So what type of services does all brain belong, all brains belong, Vermont provide? We offer primary care. So primary care of infants through older adults with all types of brains, no particular diagnoses are required. We provide primary care services and coming soon, we are also going to be opening up to folks to receive their primary care elsewhere, but are looking for some specific medical support around brain health, executive functioning, and kind of some of the common medical issues that in particular autistic and ADHD folks experience, co-occurring medical conditions. For example, when I use the term neurodivergent, that refers to brains that think, learn, and communicate differently than the so-called typical brain, although I'm not sure there really is such a thing as a typical brain, but brains that think, learn, communicate differently than the type of brain that society has beamed a typical brain. So these folks, and I belong to that community, I am autistic and ADHD, dyspraxic, dyscalculic and dyslexic. So the neurodivergent community has higher levels of autoimmune conditions, all kinds of autoimmune conditions that impact the digestive tract, the musculoskeletal system, the rest of the nervous system, and the cardiovascular system. So autoimmune conditions in particular. In addition to our healthcare domain, we also offer a range of free community programs that are offered to everybody, even those getting their healthcare services elsewhere. So these are weekly community education opportunities and social connection opportunities that are all free and open to the public. So insurance doesn't pay for these services? So health insurance pays for the healthcare part. So the healthcare part, we accept Medicaid, Medicare, we cross MVP and SIGNA. So just like any other primary care practice that participates in insurance. So that's all the usual way, but then the community social and education programs are completely separate from the healthcare. Okay. Go ahead, Arlene, did you want to start with your questions? Yes. Do you take children and adults? Yeah, so babies, infants are newborns through older adults. So babies, toddlers, kids, teens, adults, the whole lifespan. I'm a family physician, so we have two primary care clinicians, myself and Sierra Miller, who is an amazing nurse practitioner. And Sierra and I are both family medicine trains, so we take care of patients throughout the whole lifespan. Okay. So take me now, since your agency is neuro-inclusive primary care and community. Traumatic brain injury is a big thing, especially myself, I deal with epilepsy. What are certain services that you might provide people with epilepsy? And we'll start from there. Sure. So many of our patients have co-occurring epilepsy. This is common in the neurodivergent community. So we provide primary care. So this is all of the preventive care staying well, in addition to support around the specific things that people need. If patients also have specialists in the community, we work very closely with them to coordinate their care. But it really depends. So family medicine is about preventing health complications and supporting people with their current healthcare needs. What makes your agency or brains belong different than other primary care agencies? What a great question. So earlier, when I was talking about how anytime there is a default, everyone else whose brain doesn't do the thing the way the default is, is uttered. So what neuro-inclusive means is that we don't have any default workflows. All of our patients co-create a truly customized experience. What I mean by that is there are multiple ways of doing everything. There are multiple ways to make appointments. You don't have to pick up the phone and make an appointment. That is hard for a lot of brains. Is it for real? For real. There are many people who the pressure of initiating a call, auditorily processing without the visual cues to go along with it, so you're not able to see the person's lip moving or the facial expressions or non-verbal cues. You're just having the auditory information come in that's hard. Or the executive functioning skills required to initiate this high pressure task that's really stressful or staying on hold while doing all the other things. So it's not just the phone. You can book your appointments online or by email or by secure text message. When you are scheduling your appointment, you can choose not just office appointment versus telemedicine, but we also do outdoor visits, because actually entering a space is not comfortable for all people, particularly those who have a lot of health care anxiety and health care trauma, which is very, very common. You get to pick your furniture that you're sitting in. You get to pick your lighting, your sound. You get to pick from a range of sensory processing supports or executive functioning supports that work for you. And this is not just people who are asking for certain workarounds to a default. This is all patients are offered this menu of all of the different ways to interact so that they can create an experience that really works for them. Go ahead. Put your other questions. How long have you been in existence for? About six months. We opened in November. Oh, wow. So you're pretty new. Pretty new. Yeah. Was there a call for the community for different primary care? Is that why you guys exist? Yeah, exactly. So I have been a family physician for a little bit over 10 years now and I had developed an interest and experience in supporting neurodivergent kids and adults and often multi-generational families. And so one in five people learn, think or communicate differently than the so-called typical brain. So I was working in the mainstream health care system and I was finding that I was spending most of my time helping people problem solve around accessing their community. They were feeling excluded within the school systems, within accessing employment and finding employment, keeping employment. People were lonely and disconnected and really struggling with social connection. And I think a lot of this is because there's so many defaults in our society. Like this is how you're supposed to interview for a job. This is the way you have to sit in your chair at school. This is the way you have to fill out a 20-page packet to become a new patient. There's just basically like, so go ahead. And in terms of people with, since my wife and I are huge advocates for people with disabilities, one of the biggest things some people might be scared also of hiring people with special needs because they don't know us. They're so scared that they won't give us a chance. So one of the things that I tell people is if you can't get a job with an employer, create your own job. So, you know, some people need to think differently in terms of that. Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up. That's actually so one of our free community programs is called Brain Club. And there's a Brain Club happening today about this very topic. The title of the session is called Making Your Work Life Work for Your Brain. And it has a panel of community members talking about how they've done that. And I can say as a person with disabilities, it is really hard to be running this organization. And the way that I make this work is that we have a culture of interdependence here where we all are connected with and rely on one another. And so the strengths of my brain, they complement the strengths of all the people on our team's brain so that each of us are feeling supported and we can work together to try to shift the community conversation around neurodiversity and inclusion. Now, do you, I saw all brains belong at the Pride event in Montpelier. Do you provide, does all brains belong, provide specific services for LBGT? Oh, yeah, sure. Yes. So, you know, and I think we may have talked about this when we first chatted at Montpelier Pride, but there's a huge overlap between neurodiversity and gender diversity and sexual orientation diversity. So we have a large group of LGBTQ plus patients and we provide gender-affirming medical care within the context of our primary care practice. What is gender-affirming mean? Yeah, so it's going to vary depending on the person, but this may involve, let's say, hormone medications. This may involve, it kind of depends on the person. So it's really about person-centered care and supporting people in the ways that they're looking for support. Okay, so explain in your opinion on the misconceptions. One of the questions I asked is what are the misconceptions around people with special needs when people first meet them because a lot of people might be scared and so on? Go ahead. Yeah, I mean, I think a big misconception about brains in general is that the message that people get, you know, from early childhood onwards is that there's one right way to be a person. Like there's one right way to play and learn and move and communicate. And when you frame it that way, I think most listeners, reviewers would be like, no, that's not true. Yeah, I know that's not true. And yet young kids are getting the message. You know, there's like therapies that are kind of training people to appear in a more neurotypical way and that is not identity affirming and it can be really traumatic. So I think like one big misconception is that like there's no default brain. And so there's no right way to be a person. So I mean, I think that if we look at some specific misconceptions around, let's say for example, autistic people and I use identity first language because autism is an essential part of my identity. So that's why I use that term. So there's misconceptions that autistic people have no empathy, that we don't want connection, that we're not able to perspective take. Like that's just wrong. It's wrong and it's offensive. And so I think that if we can zoom out and realize that there is no one right way to communicate. There's no one right set of social skills or play skills. No one right way to learn. I think that is these are like the prerequisites for a neuro inclusive society. Talk about, you know, how you came to be as far as why did you decide to go into medicine? And, you know, despite because we here in Ableton on air, we focus on the abilities of people, not necessarily the disability. How has medicine changed your life in terms of changing other people's lives despite your challenge? Yeah, it's a great question. So I have always been really interested and drawn to like supporting the self actualization of other people. Like the idea of the self determinism of, you know, when someone really understands themselves and their own needs. And then you can you connect with your people and then you're on this path toward, you know, on your own journey. And I even remember as as, you know, a young person like being really interested in that and being really drawn to that. And I tried to go about it in a number of different ways. I have a mental health background. I did that for a while. I was an athletic coach for a while. These were like all different ways of supporting people on their journey. And when I medicine was very interesting to me in terms of the science. But in but like what I was specifically drawn to you is the relationships and the unique privilege of being afforded into someone's safe space and the work of earning that privilege. So that's what that's that's what brought me to becoming a doctor. Okay. Any more questions? Go ahead. Go ahead. Okay, we're going to continue. What what are some of the other community events that all brain belong is going through right now? Yeah. Oh, thanks for the question. So big program that we just launched is called kid connections. It is a matchmaking program for kids age three through 17. It's totally free and essentially kids teams or their support people fill out a profile of what their interests are and their communication preferences, their access needs and make a custom match with another kid who shares those. And so, so that's going on brain club I mentioned is our weekly community education series. Right now it's Thursdays but in July it's going to be shifting I think the Tuesdays but you can check out the all brains belong that org website and to see the new topic but but we have archives they all get reported. And so archives in the past six months worth of brain clubs on all everyday brain life topics from like sensory processing to relationships communication stress management. All kinds of things. So this brain club. We have a weekly lunch and learn that's free on a variety of topics like tomorrow at noon right now it's Thursdays Thursdays at noon free lunch and learn. It's about neuro inclusive employment. And next week is a parenting topic. And a special interest related events along the way that change change month to month. And then we also provide trainings for individuals and organizations about neuro diversity and inclusion. And those are the those are the big categories. Talk about since we have a couple of minutes left. Talk about the trainings and consultations part of your agency. Yeah. So this has been this is this is one of my favorite things that we do. So organizations of you know range and I think that it's a very good thing that in recent times organizations have been trying to improve the attention to diversity equity and inclusion. And I think that often neuro diversity and disability are missing from those conversations. And in particular when we think about the intersectionality of all of the different ways in which aspects of our identities are marginalized versus the privilege afforded by certain intersections of identity. You know neuro diversity is the missing piece of these conversations and so you know different types of businesses from schools to law firm to other nonprofits. All different kinds of sectors have brought have brought us into to look at neuro inclusive employment neuro diversity and culture and kind of what does it mean to be neuro inclusive. Okay so really quick. What are some of the future goals of all brains belong since you guys are so new. So I like and in addition to our being governed by a board of directors we also have a community advisory board of community members who help us shape our vision and our work. When we think about how will we know that the community is more neuro inclusive. That's how we're going to really be defining our impact. And so when we zoom out and we really are thinking about this whole business of every time you have a default, everything else is an other. Our vision is that we contribute to a community shift a paradigm shift about that there's no right way to be a person and that anytime you have a default everything else is other. And so that is that is something that I would just invite viewers to reflect on in in your in your personal life and your professional life. Is there one way that something being offered and if so can we introduce some flexibility and some choice. Okay for more information on all brains belong you can go to www.allbrainsbelong.org that is www al l b r a i n s b l b e l o n g.org allbrainsbelong.org We would like to thank Dr. Melissa Houser executive director of all brains belong for joining us on this wonderful edition of able then on air. We would like to thank our sponsors Washington County mental health Green Mountain support services and so many others for taking the time to to work with able then on air including the partnership the new partnership of all brains belong. I'm Lauren Seiler I love you. See you next time. Major sponsors for able then on air include Green Mountain support services empowering people with disabilities to live home in the community. Washington County mental health where hope and support come together. Media sponsors for able then on air include Parkchester Times Muslim Community report. www this is the Bronx dot info associated press media editors. New York Power online newspaper. U.S. press corps domestic and international anchor FM and Spotify. Partners for able then on air include you hard of New York and New England where everyone belongs. The also docks union. The division for the blind and visually impaired of Vermont. The Vermont Association for the blind and visually impaired. Central Vermont Habitat for humanity and Montpelier sustainable coalition. Montpelier Medical Center of the Bronx Rose of Kennedy Center of Bronx New York. Albert Einstein College of Medicine of the Bronx able then on air has been seen in the following publications. Parkchester Times. www this is the Bronx dot com. New York Power online newspaper. Muslim Community report. www.H dot com. And the Montpelier Bridge. able then on air is part of the following organizations. The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Boston New England chapter. And the Society of Professional Journalists.