Dr. Vu Nguyen leading a presentation on a stage with screens behind him. He is presenting in front of a large audience of people all seated at tables.We had a wonderful time hosting the 2026 Disability Health Symposium, which was presented by CEDHARS, the National Center on Health, Physical Activity and Disability (NCHPAD) and the newly formed UAB Disability Health Promotion Research Center Opens an external link.(DHPRC).
The symposium was held Aug. 31 - Sept. 1, 2026, at The Hilton Birmingham Downtown at UAB. It brought together experts, advocates and community members to explore the latest in disability health research.
We featured keynote speakers, posters and a national forum on the forefront of how disability health science feeds into programs and back into research.
Although the symposium has passed, this page will serve as a hub for all the speaker presentations, additional video content podcasts and other resources from the two-day event as the content rolls out, so that the symposium lives on.
See the full program and agenda Opens an external link. for the entire schedule, topics and more on the speakers.
Posters
Students, staff, faculty and trainees from any institution were welcome to submit abstracts for poster presentation on basic, clinical, translational, and population science that are broadly related to disability health and rehabilitation science.
Note: While faculty and staff were welcome to submit abstracts for the poster session, they were not eligible for the competition and cash prizes, as these awards were reserved for students to support their professional development and encourage continued research pursuits.
We had over 30 posters submitted, and for the poster competition for students and trainees, there were cash prizes of $500, $250 and $100. The three winners and poster titles were:
- 1st place: Kathryn Riis-Mayfield – Acute Effects of Walking on Executive Function, Anxiety, and Motor Performance in Autistic Young Adults
- 2nd place: Tejaswini Chilke – Using an LLM-Assisted Workflow to Identify and Assess Disability-Related Eligibility Exclusions in Clinical Trials
- 3rd place: Hadeel Alghanim – Do Preoperative Physical Activity and Depression Symptoms Predict Function and Quality of Life Following Arthroscopic Rotator Cuff Repair