Post-Polio Health International

Post-Polio Health International (PHI) is a relatively new name for a

PHI’s mission is to enhance the lives, health, and independence of polio survivors, as well as those in the cross-disability category of home

support groups

.

Activities

PHI publishes two quarterly newsletters, Post-Polio Health

eradication of polio

.

PHI’s core constituency is in North America, but its networks of polio survivors, clinicians, scientists, and historians have always been widely international. This is true also of its medical and consumer advisory committees (the latter now being explicitly an international committee),[4] attendance at its international conferences, the extent to which it communicates with polio and disability organizations in Europe, South America, Asia, Australasia, and Africa,^[9] and the extent to which its work is known by international organizations.^[10] PHI also holds a substantial archive of materials on living with polio.

PHI is not itself a

History

After the polio

were often isolated from the support needed to cope with maturing and aging with a significant physical disability.

PHI at first devoted itself to making sure

disabilities

– in education, employment, family life, travel, and leisure activities. The organization’s magazine (until 1985), The Rehabilitation Gazette, had those matters as its dominant themes.

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, PHI was also at the forefront of what has come to be called the

home health care

and personal attendants to ensure that people with serious physical disabilities would be able to live in the community of adults rather than as perpetual dependents within families or institutions.

Toward the end of the 1970s, PHI began to receive an increasing number of reports from polio survivors of new symptoms – a constellation of

– that sounded like a repeat of some of the early symptoms of poliomyelitis, or perhaps an accelerated aging process. In concert with clinicians, researchers, and polio survivors, PHI began to publish material on these “late effects of poliomyelitis,”. And in 1981 PHI convened the first of its international post-polio conferences to address this issue.

There have now been nine international PHI conferences on post-polio syndrome and other topics having to do with living and aging with polio. These “St. Louis conferences” as they are often called in polio circles, are not always held in St. Louis. The first in the series was held in Chicago, and the tenth was held in Warm Springs, Georgia, in 2009.

During the 1980s, as

for polio survivors began to form throughout the US and elsewhere, PHI offered help to such groups in various ways – especially through its conferences and publications (including directories of support groups and health care professionals), but also through arranging speakers, assisting with local or regional conferences, and sponsoring workshops. PHI is not itself a support group, but rather remains a network in support of such groups, and in support of individual polio survivors, clinicians, and researchers.

Until 1984, though always incorporated as a

organization, PHI had operated entirely with a large network of volunteers, organized and led by Gini Laurie. Financial support came from donors and subscribers to the Rehabilitation Gazette. But after the 1983 St. Louis conference, it was evident that a more formal organizational structure was required. Judith Raymond was hired as executive director in 1984, and took over PHI’s day-to-day operations as well as editorial work on its publications and organizational work on its conferences. She was succeeded in 1987 by Joan L. Headley, who served as executive director for 30 years, retiring in 2017. She was succeeded by Brian M. Tiburzi on September 1, 2017.

Notes