Parkinson Voice Project Awards 2021 SPEAK OUT!® & LOUD Crowd® Grant to The Reinert Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic at Saint Louis University
Parkinson Voice Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the speech and communication of individuals with Parkinson’s and related neurological disorders through continuous speech therapy, has named The Reinert Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic at Saint Louis University as a recipient of its 2021 SPEAK OUT! & LOUD Crowd Grant Program. Full listing of the 2021 grant recipients.
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 SLU Reinert Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic is committed to offering Parkinson Voice Project’s effective speech therapy program in the St. Louis area.
“Up to 90% of people with Parkinson’s are at high risk of losing their ability to speak, and swallowing complications account for 70% of the mortality rate in this patient population. Our vision at Parkinson Voice Project is to make our highly effective speech therapy program accessible to people with Parkinson’s worldwide,” said Parkinson Voice Project’s Founder and CEO Samantha Elandary.
This grant program honors Daniel R. Boone, PhD, 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." Parkinson Voice Project’s program combines individual and 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 solely 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 hosts the World’s Largest Parkinson’s Chorus.
Parkinson Voice Project’s hosts daily online speech practice sessions to support and encourage people with Parkinson’s globally. These sessions are available on the organization’s website.
Parkinson Voice Project has trained more than 3,500 speech-language pathologists in its SPEAK OUT! & LOUD Crowd program, including clinicians in Australia, Canada, Israel, Italy, Greece, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Africa, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom.
Saint Louis University is a Catholic, Jesuit institution that values academic excellence, life-changing research, compassionate health care, and a strong commitment to faith and service. Founded in 1818, the University fosters the intellectual and character development of nearly 13,000 students on two campuses in St. Louis and Madrid, Spain. Building on a legacy of more than 200 years, Saint Louis University continues to move forward with an unwavering commitment to a higher purpose, a greater good.