ADA Live! Episode 54: Disability and Aging: Community Living and Policy

Joe Caldwell

Director of Long-Term Services and Supports Policy at the National Council on Aging (NCOA)

Joe Caldwell, Ph.D. is Director of Long-Term Services and Supports Policy at the National Council on Aging. He has over 20 years of experience in the field of Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) as a researcher, policy expert, and parent of a son with intellectual and developmental disabilities. At NCOA, he leads the Disability and Aging Collaborative, a coalition of 40 national aging and disability organizations that work together to advance long-term services and supports policy. Joe is also an Adjunct Research Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he earned his doctorate in Disability Studies. His research has primarily focused on self-directed supports, family support, and the self-advocacy movement. He currently is co-PI of the Family Support Research and Training Center and collaborates with other federally funded research centers on HCBS quality and community living policy. He serves on the boards of the National Alliance for Caregiving and the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities.

Leslie Fried

Leslie Fried is the senior director of the Center for Benefits Access at the National Council on Aging (NCOA), where she directs the Center’s activities to support community-based organizations outreach and enrollment activities of low-income older adults and advocates for improved access to Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP and other public benefits for seniors and adults with disabilities of limited means. Prior to joining the NCOA, Ms. Fried was a senior attorney with the American Bar Association Commission on Law and Aging. She joined the ABA in September 1998, as the Medicare Advocacy Project attorney, a collaborative project with the Alzheimer’s Association. In 2003, she was selected to be a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance, a nonpartisan organization made up of the nation's leading experts on social insurance. From 2005-2009, she was a patient advocate member of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Medicare Evidence Development and Coverage Advisory Committee.

From 2009- 2010, she was a member of the Continuing Care Advisory Committee for the Maryland Department of Aging. Before joining the ABA staff, Ms. Fried was in private practice representing clients in various elder law and domestic relations matters. From 1985 to 1995, she was a staff attorney, and then managing attorney, of Legal Services for Senior Citizens of Montgomery County, Maryland, an Older Americans Act legal services program.

Ms. Fried received her B.A. from the University of Michigan and her J.D. from the University of Maryland. She is a member of the Maryland, District of Columbia and Supreme Court bars.