Healthcare
Parkinson Voice Project, a nonprofit organization, has named East Texas Physical Therapy as a recipient of its 2019 SPEAK OUT! & LOUD Crowd Grant Program.
Of the 149 grant recipients, five are international clinics. The total number of recipients marks a 62% increase from 2018 when this grant program launched. A full listing of 2019 grant recipients can be found on the organization’s website at https://www.parkinsonvoiceproject.org/.Grant recipients include hospitals, university speech therapy clinics, private practices and nonprofit Parkinson’s organizations.
Each clinic will receive free training for their speech-language pathologists and graduate students, as well as speech therapy supplies. Some grant recipients will also receive funding to offset the cost of providing group speech therapy. East Texas Physical Therapy is committed to offering Parkinson Voice Project’s speech therapy program in the areas in and around Hopkins, Hunt, Rains, Delta and Van Zandt counties.
“Up to 90% of people with Parkinson’s are at high risk of losing their ability to speak, and aspiration pneumonia caused by swallowing issues accounts for 70% of the mortality rate in this patient population. Awarding these grants has substantially increased access to quality speech treatment to those living with Parkinson’s,” said Parkinson Voice Project’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Samantha Elandary.
This grant program honors Daniel R. Boone, PhD, a world-renowned speech-language pathologist and voice expert who recognized in the late 1950s that individuals with Parkinson’s could improve their communication if they spoke with “intent.” Parkinson Voice Project’s highly effective speech therapy program is based on Boone’s teachings and combines individual therapy with ongoing group therapy to convert speech from an automatic function to an intentional act.
ABOUT PARKINSON VOICE PROJECT
Parkinson Voice Project is the only 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in the world dedicated to helping individuals with Parkinson’s improve their speech and swallowing. The organization runs a speech therapy clinic in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and also hosts the World’s Largest Parkinson’s Chorus consisting of nearly 100 individuals with Parkinson’s whose voices have been restored through their program.
Parkinson Voice Project developed the SPEAK OUT! & LOUD Crowd program. The vision of the organization is to replicate its two-part therapy approach across the globe to help individuals with Parkinson’s preserve their speech and swallowing abilities. More than 1,600 speech-language pathologists have been trained to date, including clinicians in Australia, Canada, Finland, Greece, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Israel and New Zealand.