Isabella Gliatti, a UofL student majoring in biology and exhibit volunteer is a Originally from Lebanon, Ohio, Gliatti lives with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which affects collagen production and leads to chronic pain, joint hypermobility, tachycardia, and fatigue, among other symptoms.

“It’s good for the public to see the unique richness of people with disabilities and that just because people have disabilities, doesn’t mean that they can’t accomplish all different types of things,” Gliatti said.

Training compassionate health care providers

The exhibition was curated by , an international organization founded by award-winning New York City-based photographer Rick Guidotti. The organization collaborates with hospitals, medical schools, museums and more. Guidotti, who once photographed supermodels, wanted to show the unique beauty and ability within disability.

More than 30 local participants were photographed to create the exhibit at UofL.
Each face in the gallery also displays a digital link to a brief video introducing them in their own words.

Through partnership with Positive Exposure and funding support from the UofL Health Sciences Office of Health Equity and Engagement, the exhibit was brought to Louisville as a collaboration between the UofL School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics and the  Kornhauser Library, and includes students, volunteers, physicians and staff.

Faye Jones, pediatrics professor, said the project supports UofL’s mission. “Our holistic approach creates an environment where varied perspectives and backgrounds are valued and ensures that the workforce is equipped to address the health needs of an increasingly diverse population.”

Vida Vaughn, director of the Kornhauser Health Sciences Library, helped to coordinate efforts to bring Positive Exposure to Louisville. “Providing space for this important exhibit aligns perfectly with our goal of promoting patient values as a component of evidence-based practice,” she said. “The beauty of diversity is not just about what makes us distinct, but about how those distinctions create new opportunities for connection and understanding.”

For UofL Department of Pediatrics professors Corrie Harris and Sarah Korte, Positive Exposure became a way to view inclusiveness through the lens of training future compassionate physicians.

Harris, a pediatric hospitalist who works at Home of the Innocents, became familiar with Positive Exposure about six years ago at a conference, and was moved by the message of focusing on the humanity behind diagnosis.

“We really want to remind providers that every patient is a person first — before we get caught up in all the diagnoses and treatments,” she said. “We don’t want to lose sight of the humanity of medicine.”

Korte first discovered the Positive Exposure website during the height of the Covid pandemic when searching for ways to engage students remotely.

She created a project for medical students to choose a participant video from the website and write a reflection, later joining an online discussion group about what they learned. That exercise became a permanent component of the curriculum.

“As health care providers, we often come in with preconceived notions about what we think a patient wants or what we think they should accomplish and don’t ask them what they want,” said Korte. “We need to address our implicit biases and give the patients autonomy to make those decisions about what they want for themselves.”

Recent medical school graduate Sean Woods was the student lead for the Positive Exposure project. He began a residency in pediatric neurology at UofL Health in July 2025.

Woods said the curriculum reflection exercise was revelatory for some and reinforcing for others.

“It’ll make us all better physicians in terms of building relationships with our patients to get an understanding for who they are and what their goals are, and to really work together,” he said.

Reaching the Cardinal community and beyond

Gliatti was invited to volunteer for the project and share her story as a member of .

The club is a UofL coalition of disabled students and their allies that work to foster a safe and inclusive environment, promote student led advocacy and provide a space for disabled students to build solidarity.

Gliatti said the Positive Exposure exhibition helps to increase awareness and inclusiveness around both invisible and visible disabilities. She said she has been pleased to not only share her own story but hear the stories of so many others.

“I hope that someone who is in a similar boat can hear my story and think, ‘Hey, this girl has all these struggles, but she’s in college. Maybe I could do that, too?’”

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Updated Nov. 6, 2025

Professor Oluwaferanmi Okanlami encouraged attendees to ask that question at the 2024 health equity keynote: “Disabusing Disability: Demonstrating that Disability Doesn’t Mean Inability.” Okanlami, whose mission is to close the gap among the diverse members of our society to create a more equitable and promising future for all, highlighted shortcomings in how most of society views disabilities and what must change.

Born in Nigeria before immigrating to the U.S. at a young age, Okanlami attended high school at Deerfield Academy and went on to Stanford University where he also ran track & field, serving as captain his last two seasons and achieving Academic All-American recognition. Okanlami earned his medical degree from the University of Michigan before matching into orthopedic surgery residency at Yale University. At the beginning of his third year of residency, he experienced a spinal cord injury, paralyzing him from the chest down. After two surgeries and intense rehabilitation, he recovered some motor function and navigates the world as a proud wheelchair user.

Today, Okanlami is director of student accessibility and accommodation services at the University of Michigan, where he oversees the Office of Services for Students with Disabilities, two Testing Accommodation Centers and the Adaptive Sports & Fitness Program. He also is an assistant professor of family medicine, physical medicine & rehabilitation and urology at Michigan Medicine and an adjunct assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. In addition, he earned a master’s in engineering, science and technology entrepreneurship from the University of Notre Dame and completed his family medicine residency at Memorial Hospital in South Bend, Indiana.

As an accomplished athlete, he is passionate about adaptive sports and fitness and champions access to physical fitness and inclusive recreational and competitive sports for all.

At Research!Louisville, Okanlami’s topic provided insight into creating a health system which is accessible to and inclusive of both patients and providers with disabilities, as well as providing provisions necessary for students and employees with disabilities in higher education.

The Americans with Disabilities Act defines a person with a disability as an individual who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, a person who has a history or record of such an impairment or a person who is perceived by others as having such an impairment. Okanlami’s work emphasizes that disabilities do not fairly identify individuals, but more than likely perceptions of disabilities can lead to artificially placing limits on people who have just as much or more to contribute to society.

As a disabled, Black, Nigerian, immigrant, cis-gender heterosexual, male, physician and athlete, Okanlami doesn’t just speak from an acquired knowledge-based perspective. He has experienced firsthand the difficulties of being identified in a culture that does not understand his main message that “disability does not mean inability.”

In his talk, Okanlami illustrated how each individual with a disability has unique needs for accommodations.

“When you have met one person with a disability, you have met one person with a disability,” he said.

Okanlami said that everyone must recognize that we live in an ableist world and we need to provide reasonable and appropriate accommodation for people that identify has having disabilities, whether those disabilities are visible or invisible.

“The health care system is ableist by definition. The medical model of disability teaches us that disability is pathology. It is something that is broken that should be fixed, prevented or cured,” Okanlami said. “The social model of disability does not see the problem living in the individual, it sees the system we are in as being inaccessible. If someone is born without the ability to walk, that shouldn’t be a problem if we have access to the resource they need to be able to navigate.”

But he encouraged everyone to take action.

“What is it we can do to make someone’s tomorrow better than their yesterday?” Okanlami said. “There is something that each of you can do, even if it is a tiny little bite, but the impact that little bite can have could be something that makes a profound impact on someone else’s life.”

Okanlami’s Research!Louisville presentation on Sept. 19 at the University of Louisville Health Sciences Center was led by the HSC Office of Health Equity and Engagement and the School of Medicine Office of Community Engagement and Diversity. To watch his entire keynote discussion, visit the .

Betty Coffman contributed to this story.