ASHA Voices – Details, episodes & analysis

We catch up with researchers Jeff Holt and Karen Avraham about the state of gene therapy for addressing hearing loss and deafness. Both are part of the Research Symposium on Hearing at the 2024 ASHA Convention.

Our guests explain what recent breakthroughs, including successful clinical trials, mean for the future of gene therapy. They comment on audiologists' potential role in treatment and assessment related to gene therapy.

You can learn more about gene therapy and hearing loss at the Research Symposium on Hearing at the 2024 ASHA Convention in Seattle this December.

Learn More:

Research Symposium on Hearing

ASHA Voices: Revisiting Conversations on Gene Therapy and Hearing Loss

First Deaf Gene Therapy Recipient in U.S. Gains Hearing

In its most severe forms, spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) was once thought to be unavoidably terminal. But recent developments are allowing those with the disorder to live longer, healthier lives, and today’s guest says this means a greater need for speech-language pathologists' services.

SLP Katlyn McGrattan (University of Minnesota; Masonic Children's Hospital) says advances in treating SMA essentially created a new condition. She explains the role SLPs play in treating feeding and swallowing issues, dysarthria, and other such conditions seen in this emerging patient population.

Later in the episode, hear from the mother of a son with SMA. She shares her family’s experience.

Learn More:

ASHA Voices: Exploring Caregiver-Provider Interactions

Dysphagia Phenotypes in Spinal Muscular Atrophy: The Past, Present, and Promise for the Future

ASHA Evidence Map: Spinal Muscular Atrophy

Transcript

In this panel discussion, guests address how SLPs can empower themselves to effectively provide their services cross-linguistically. The guests share stories of their personal and professional connections to multilingualism, demonstrating the link between language, identity, and their work.

Transcript

On this episode of ASHA Voices, Lindsay Riegler, an innovation specialist and research SLP with the Cincinnati Veterans Affairs Medical Center, shares her perspective on telepractice from inside the VA, where she’s seen many barriers to telepractice removed.

At the center of the conversation are questions about access. What can the VA teach us about what’s possible through telepractice? And how is their use of telepractice different than what we see from other health care providers?

Plus, hear our guest run through a list of six common misconceptions about telepractice, correcting myths and sharing experiences from her career.

In health care, clinicians’ productivity is measured closely via requirements intended to manage labor costs and ensure patients are receiving care. Simply put, these expectations often have tremendous influence on SLPs as they treat clients every day.

On the podcast, we’re joined by a panel of health care administrators who represent a wide range of settings to discuss this subject. We talk about what to do when you feel your productivity requirements are too high and look at the ethical obligations of administrators. Plus, our panel shares their thoughts on how to find time for interprofessional practice in a demanding work environment.

The productivity discussion will continue at the upcoming ASHA online conference, “Empowered SLPs in Health Care: Breaking Barriers and Shaping Solutions,” with our guests participating in a panel on this subject.

After a traumatic brain injury, someone may experience wide-ranging difficulties related to their emotions, cognition, and their ability to communicate. When it comes to cognitive rehabilitation, it takes a team to help patients meet their goals.

Neuropsychologist Brigid Waldron-Perrine and SLP McKay Moore Sohlberg help us take a patient-centered look at where psychology and speech-language pathology overlap and interact.

The duo highlights what is possible when psychologists and SLPs work together and, they deliver recommendations for what to do when patients ask about the potential for COVID-19-related cognitive effects.

In just a split second, a traumatic brain injury can turn your life upside-down.SLP Alaina Davis takes us from the basketball court to the boxing ring to talk about traumatic brain injury (TBI) and rehabilitation. Through her podcast and thoughtfully crafted social media posts, Davis brings attention to TBIs and what they mean for cognition.Davis is faculty member at Howard University where she also works as a part of the concussion management team. She shares her experience treating student athletes and what she’s learned from the experience.

When the pandemic sent much of higher education into the virtual world last spring, Siva priya Santhanam wondered whether the autism support program she runs at Metropolitan State University of Denver could continue. The peer-support program brings students studying speech, language, and hearing sciences together with university students with autism.

Now, a year later, Santhanam joins ASHA Voices to talk about the ways she’s sustained – and grown – the program. Santhanam discusses supporting students with autism during the pandemic, the benefits to the speech-language students, and the program’s non-hierarchical structure.

The Academy Award nominations are in, and one of this year’s contenders examines the emotional toll of sudden hearing loss. On this episode of ASHA Voices, we discuss how the movie “Sound of Metal” fits into a long history of hearing loss and tinnitus portrayals on the silver screen -- and what this can tell us about societal views.

Joining our panel are audiologists Peter Ivory and Michelle Hu, and author and media scholar Mack Hagood. The trio discuss past films and performances featuring people with hearing loss, and a sudden increase in on-screen tinnitus portrayals in the early 2000s. And we dig into Oscar-nominated “Sound of Metal” from the perspectives of audiologists and people who have hearing loss, as Hu does.