Methodist Hospital Receives Parkinson Voice Project’s 2021 SPEAK OUT!® & LOUD Crowd® Grant

The Methodist Hospital Outpatient Therapy program was one of 302 locations to receive the 2021 SPEAK OUT! & LOUD Crowd Grant from Parkinson Voice Project.

Grant recipients include hospitals, university speech therapy clinics, private practices and nonprofit organizations. Each recipient receives therapy supplies and free training for its speech-language pathologists and graduate students.

“Up to 90% of people with Parkinson’s disease are at high risk of losing their ability to speak, and swallowing complications account for 70% of the mortality rate in this patient population,” said Samantha Elandary, CEO and founder of Parkinson Voice Project. “Our vision at Parkinson Voice Project is to make our highly effective speech therapy program accessible to people with Parkinson’s worldwide.”

Methodist Hospital is committed to offering Parkinson Voice Project’s effective speech therapy program in the Omaha area. The hospital will use the grant dollars to offer training opportunities for staff and graduate students, consult with the Parkinson Voice Project outreach coordinator, and access additional Parkinson Voice Project education materials and therapy resources.

“We are very excited to be one of the grant recipients for the Parkinson Voice Project program,” said Jamie Curtis, outpatient speech-language pathologist for Methodist Hospital. “Having these tools in place will only further enhance the work we do for our Parkinson’s patients.”

The Parkinson Voice Project program is also available at Methodist Fremont Health and Methodist Jennie Edmundson Hospital.

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 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.