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Fort HealthCare Offers Services from International Parkinson Voice Project

Community Health
Thursday, September 23, 2021

Fort HealthCare is pleased to be named a recipient of the 2021 SPEAK OUT!® & LOUD Crowd® Grant program, developed by the Parkinson Voice Project (PVP), the only 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in the world solely dedicated to helping individuals with Parkinson’s improve their speech and swallowing skills. Since not all patients can travel to PVP headquarters in Texas for treatment, they offer workshops to train SLPs from other parts of the world in its programs.

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. Fort HealthCare also received the grant in 2019. A full listing of grant recipients can be found here on the PVP website.

Kelly Foster, MS-CCC, SLP is a speech-language pathologist at Fort HealthCare Therapy & Sport Center. She received specialized training to assist with implementing PVP’s speech therapy program in the south-central Wisconsin area.

She notes, “We see numerous patients in our clinics with Parkinson’s Disease and I felt that their communication skills were being underserved. So many patients have complaints that people cannot understand them, or they are told they talk too softly. This grant is for a program that helps empower these patients to speak with purpose and intent. Once they start doing that, they become more confident in themselves and start living with intent.”

PVP Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Samantha Elandary notes, “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. Our vision at Parkinson Voice Project is to make our highly effective speech therapy program accessible to people with Parkinson’s worldwide.”

Foster adds, “Because Parkinson’s is a progressive disease, the skills that patients who complete SPEAK OUT!® and participate in the LOUD Crowd® program have learned are skills that they will use for the duration of their lives.”

Regarding treatment, Foster explains, “With a referral from a primary care provider, patients can come in to see me for an initial evaluation to determine if they would be appropriate candidates for the SPEAK OUT!® program. Once they are deemed appropriate candidates, they complete a four-week individual treatment program with me.”

Foster continues, “Typical sessions are 45 minutes, three times a week for four weeks. Upon completion of the program, patients transition to the LOUD Crowd®, which is a weekly group session to help maintain their new skills. It’s a commitment and requires daily practice at home, but it’s effective.” With a provider’s referral, patients can make appointments with Kelly by calling the Fort HealthCare Therapy & Sport Center clinic in Fort Atkinson at (920) 563-9357 or Lake Mills at (920) 648-8170.

According to the PVP, their 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. The PVP’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

PVP is the only 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in the world solely dedicated to helping individuals with Parkinson’s improve their speech and swallowing skills. 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 hosts daily online speech practice sessions to support and encourage people with Parkinson’s globally. These sessions are available on the organization’s website (ParkinsonVoiceProject.org).

PVP 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.

About Fort HealthCare Therapy & Sport Center Speech-Language Pathologists

SLPs help individuals learn or regain the ability to communicate and swallow safely. Fort HealthCare’s SLPs work to prevent, evaluate, diagnose, and treat communication and swallowing disorders across one’s lifespan. The Fort HealthCare Therapy & Sport Center provides personalized, empathetic care, close to home with clinic locations in Fort Atkinson, Lake Mills, and Whitewater. Therapists work individually with patients to achieve goals that are meaningful throughout the recovery process. To learn more, visit therapyandsport.forthealthcare.com.