Bonnielin Swenor is an associate professor of ophthalmology at Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins Medicine. She is also a core faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Center on Aging and Health, the Center for Innovative Care in Aging at the school of nursing, and the Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Swenor’s work could be categorized into two general avenues. One includes studying the relationship between vision loss and aging, and advocating for policies that promote health for older adults. The other involves using data to change societal views of people with disabilities and impairments, with the goal of shifting the paradigm from “living with a disability” to “thriving with a disability.”
To achieve these goals, Swenor, who has a visual impairment, leads or participates in a dizzying array of activities, from research studies and consortiums to presentations and podcasts. Her crusade for advocacy and awareness, which has caught the attention of educators, researchers and policymakers, aims to address gaps in access to things many of us take for granted. Chief among these is health care.
Collaboration Is Key
As principal investigator for the Swenor Research Group, Swenor leads a team that studies vision and aging issues, disability health inequities and inclusion, and access to care for people with visual impairments and other types of disabilities. In addition, she routinely collaborates with researchers from the Wilmer Eye Institute’s vision rehabilitation department, the Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health and the Bloomberg School of Public Health to examine utilization of health care for people with vision and hearing loss, as well as to identify barriers to accessing care for people with all types of disabilities.
For Swenor, collaboration is key to acquiring and disseminating information. In January, she founded the Johns Hopkins Disability Health Research Center, which brings together researchers and other stakeholders from throughout the university to address health disparities among people with disabilities. Swenor is the center’s director and co-hosts its new podcast, Included: the Disability Equity Podcast.
Recently, she and colleagues from the Wilmer Eye Institute and Duke University Medical Center established a framework model that integrates disability, geriatrics and ophthalmology concepts in order to assess the impacts of visual impairment on older adults. The group’s work was published in The Gerontologist. In October, she partnered with colleagues at Johns Hopkins and beyond to launch the SENSE Network, an international consortium on sensory aging research that aims to build collaborations that quicken the pace of research in this area beyond what any one researcher can achieve.
A Voice for the Vulnerable
Lately, Swenor’s efforts have focused largely on the inequities faced by people with disabilities in protecting themselves from COVID-19. She points out, for example, that they are at a considerable disadvantage even when it comes to receiving basic information on proper hygiene to prevent the spread of the disease. In September, the American Foundation for the Blind released the results of a research study in which a nationwide team that included Swenor examined the impact of COVID-19 on adults in the U.S. who are blind or who have low vision.
In recent months, she has published or been featured in publications ranging from Lancet Public Health (“Disability and COVID-19: Who Counts Depends on Who Is Counted”) to STAT, in which she describes how, as a person with a disability, she struggled to obtain a test for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. (The story was also picked up by CNBC.) Her work has been covered widely by The Johns Hopkins University (JHU), on topics that include people with disabilities in higher education and challenges in accessing critical health care information for people with disabilities.
In August, Johns Hopkins named Swenor to the JHU Roadmap 2020 Task Force, which is charged with reviewing the university’s progress in meeting its diversity and inclusion goals and developing recommendations for the next five years. She was also elected a member of the university’s Diversity Leadership Council, which bestowed on her a JHU Diversity Recognition Award, citing her ability to engage multiple stakeholders and channel their energies to achieve effective outcomes on behalf of people with disabilities.
Extending her Reach
Other institutions have taken note of Swenor’s work and often look to her expertise and unique perspective to inform their paths forward. In September, she was a speaker during the seminar COVID-19 and Disability: An Unequal Response at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. In a webinar for the American Foundation for the Blind Leadership Conference, she spoke on Using Data to Ensure COVID-19 Responses Are Inclusive of Adults with Vision Loss.
In October, she participated in a panel discussion on vision and aging during the Gerontological Society of America’s annual scientific meeting. That was followed by a panel presentation organized by the Global Coalition on Aging, marking the launch of the 2020 International Vision Health Scorecard, an initiative that highlights policies and eye care best practices across 15 countries and identifies universal themes for addressing vision health worldwide.
With razor sharp focus, Swenor continues to connect with those who would help spread her message of accessibility and inclusion. In November, she was a panelist during Johns Hopkins University’s 2020 Medicine for the Greater Good Symposium, where she spoke about the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. This month, she is scheduled to present “Life Course of Health Vision: Shaping Europe’s Policy Priorities for Vision in the Decade of Healthy Aging” during a Global Coalition on Aging expert roundtable.
With the coming new year and the anticipated availability of vaccines to combat COVID-19, Swenor will no doubt be busy as she continues to advocate for accessibility for all. We’ll try to keep up.