Parkinson Voice Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, has named Kaleida Health’s Buffalo Therapy Services as a recipient of its 2021 SPEAK OUT! & LOUD Crowd Grant Program. A full listing of the 2021 grant recipients can be found here.

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. Buffalo Therapy Services is committed to offering Parkinson Voice Project’s effective speech therapy program in the Western New York area.

“The speech therapists were thrilled to receive the grant again,” said Lucy Papia, DPT, manager of Rehabilitation Services at Kaleida Health. “They are proud to continue offering this program to individuals with Parkinson’s disease and look forward to the results that the patients experience.”

“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.

For more information on SPEAK OUT! and LOUD Crowd at Buffalo Therapy Services visitwww.kaleidahealth.org or call (716) 580-7360.