The Natural Hazards Center is pleased to introduce Erin Taylor and Elan Tulberg as the recipients of the 2026 Disability and Disasters Award. Their dedication to fostering community and strengthening disaster preparedness for people with disabilities impressed the selection committee. We’re so excited to welcome them to the 2026 Natural Hazards Workshop!
Erin Taylor, founder and executive director of Upstream Access
Erin Taylor is a passionate advocate for equity and accessibility, and the executive director of Upstream Access, a nonprofit working to strengthen social connections and advance inclusive disaster preparedness for people with disabilities.
Taylor has worked in disability justice space for most of her career, but her focus at the intersection of disability and disaster began when her consulting business AIM-4-Access—which she co-founded with her partner—hosted listening sessions to assess the state of emergency preparedness in Oregon back in 2022.
Repeatedly, individuals with disabilities shared that they felt unprepared for disasters and disconnected from the people and resources that could help them during emergencies. Their stories inspired Taylor to establish Upstream Access.
“Dismantling social isolation and loneliness and improving emergency preparedness go hand-in-hand. So, I wanted to blend the two,” Taylor said. “In the disability community, independence is so important. But we also recognize our interdependence.”
Through regular listening sessions, trainings, and community building events, Upstream Access’ work aims to advance disability justice, anti-ableism, health promotion, and disaster preparedness across Oregon and Southwest Washington.
Drawing on Person-Centered Emergency Preparedness (P-CEP)—an evidence-based framework developed by the Collaborating 4 Inclusion research team at the University of Sydney, Australia—Upstream Access aims to develop disaster readiness plans that recognize the existing skills, supports, and resources of people with disabilities or chronic health conditions, along with their unique needs.
A core focus of this preparedness work is power resilience. The potential for power outages during winter storms, heat waves, and other extreme weather events is a critical and often overlooked area of vulnerability for many people with disabilities, who often need reliable electricity for mobility, communication, and life-sustaining equipment.
That’s why one of Upstream Access’ current initiatives is focused on providing renewable back-up power to help individuals and families with disabilities feel more confident when emergencies happen. Recognizing and addressing vulnerabilities in this way, Taylor explained, can improve resilience for all people.
“People are going to become either situationally, temporarily, or permanently disabled during a disaster,” Taylor said. “Improving accessibility and resilience for people with disabilities now makes everyone safer during moments of crisis.”
Elan Tulberg, University of Texas at Austin
Elan Tulberg is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin. While she has always identified as an intersectional feminist researcher, Tulberg’s diagnosis with Crohn’s Disease around the start of her PhD studies in 2021, coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic, was a turning point in her scholarship.
“These circumstances kind of radicalized me and reoriented my personal and scholarly interests towards disability studies, and the importance of prioritizing disability as a component of intersectional work,” Tulberg said.
Her own experience with disability, and the isolation that accompanied it, inspired her Master’s thesis "Are We Still Friends?: Understanding Disabled Women of Color’s Experiences with Friendship & Isolation During Covid."
Tulberg’s current PhD dissertation research, which focuses on the experiences of disabled residents of Los Angeles during the January 2025 Southern California wildfires, builds on her interest in crisis, gender, race, and community.
“Everyday existence as disabled people often requires unique tactics of survival,” Tulberg said. “I’m interested in how people in the disability community relied on this lived experience during the fires.”
In particular, Tulberg’s research will investigate how disabled people's formal and informal social connections that helped them to prepare and evacuate during the fires. She hopes that her work will eventually help to highlight and address gaps in traditional emergency management responses.
“Disability as a social category is not a one-size-fits-all. So, we're not going to have a disaster preparedness or response policy that addresses every single disabled person's needs,” Tulberg explained.
“We need adaptable, flexible policies, policies that are informed by listening to the disabled community, as well as policies that foster community building and accessible gathering spaces for people with disabilities. Because we know those social connections are a major factor in survival.”
Tulberg was encouraged to apply for the Disability and Disaster Award by last year’s winner Angela Frederick, an alumna of UT Austin. She hopes that the 2026 Natural Hazards Workshop will be an opportunity to reach beyond academia and connect with practitioners, policymakers, and other professionals interested in disability justice.
As part of the Disability and Disasters Award, Taylor and Tulberg will receive registration, meals, and travel expenses to attend the 51st annual Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop. You can learn more about the award, which was made possible by a generous donation from a member of the hazards and disaster community, here. You can donate to this award or other Center activities via our giving page.