When it comes to developmental disability, the Kennedy legacy is as storied as anywhere else. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed the President’s Panel on Mental Retardation (PPMR), a blue-ribbon initiative designed to put forward a national plan of action for what we today refer to as intellectual disability. Many of PPMR’s recommendations were present in the last bill Kennedy would sign before his assassination in 1963. They would be further advanced by his brother, Sen. Ted Kennedy, who in 1970 would champion the Developmental Disabilities Act, broadening the law to encompass other diagnoses (including cerebral palsy and autism) while establishing an infrastructure for research, rights protection, and services-planning that would bring tens of thousands out of institutions and

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