BUFFALO, N.Y. — Buffalo State College and its Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic were awarded a grant for Parkinson's treatment.
The grant was given by the Parkinson Voice Project.
It's a nonprofit organization based in Richardson, Texas, and it has named Buffalo State College as a recipient of its 2021 SPEAK OUT! & LOUD Crowd Grant Program.
According to the news release, Buffalo State's clinic is committed to offering Parkinson Voice Project’s effective speech therapy program in Western New York.
“Up to 90 percent of people with Parkinson’s are at high risk of losing their ability to speak, and swallowing complications account for 70 percent of the mortality rate in this patient population,” said Parkinson Voice Project’s Founder and CEO Samantha Elandary.
“Our vision at Parkinson Voice Project is to make our highly effective speech therapy program accessible to people with Parkinson’s worldwide.”
Its clinicians developed a program that combines education, individual speech therapy called SPEAK OUT! and ongoing group sessions called the LOUD Crowd.
Students enrolled in Buffalo State’s speech-language pathology graduate program will apply these new therapies through the campus’s Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic.
The 302 grant recipients include hospitals, university speech therapy clinics, private practices, and nonprofit organizations. Each clinic receives therapy supplies and free training for their speech-language pathologists and graduate students. The full list of recipients can be found at parkinsonvoiceproject.org.
This grant program honors Daniel R. Boone, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, a world-renowned speech-language pathologist and voice expert who recognized in the late 1950s that individuals with Parkinson's could improve their communication by “speaking with intent."
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