The Davis Center Empowers the Voice of Parkinson’s Clients

Marilyn Fairchild and Carrie Slag sitting at a desk, smiling at the camera
Marilyn Fairchild (left) and Carrie Slag

Speech comes so naturally that most of us take it for granted, ordering at a restaurant or chatting with friends without a second thought. For people with Parkinson's disease, though, progressive voice changes can turn everyday conversations into a challenge. As the condition advances, they increasingly hear 'What?' 'I can't hear you,' and 'Speak up!' from family, friends, and colleagues—communication barriers that affect not just the person with Parkinson's, but everyone in their social circle.

Parkinson's affects a person’s nervous system leading to reduced motor control, including muscle control in the throat and chest. This reduced control can cause hypophonia, where the person speaks in a soft, breathy voice, becoming increasingly hard for people to hear and understand.

Working with skilled therapists can help keep Parkinson’s symptoms like hypophonia more manageable. Recognizing this critical need for specialized support in the area of voice and swallowing, speech pathologists Marilyn Fairchild and Carrie Slag at the Julia M. Davis Center, received a clinician education grant from the Parkinson's Voice Project. This grant provides training to clinicians and graduate students to prepare them to provide SPEAK OUT! services to individuals with Parkinson's disease.

Speaking with intent

The main message of the program is “speaking with intent,” explains Fairchild. “When clients with Parkinson's are more intentional about their speech, they are often better able to make themselves understood.”

According to The Parkinson Voice Project, their SPEAK OUT! Therapy Program “helps people with Parkinson’s and related neurological disorders regain and retain their speech and swallowing. This highly effective, evidence-based treatment combines education, individual and group speech therapy, daily home practice, and continuous follow-ups. Patients are empowered to ‘speak with INTENT,’ transitioning speech from an automatic function to an intentional act.”

Clients at the Davis Center meet with a SPEAK OUT!-licensed provider along with a student clinician and receive 12 therapy sessions over 4 weeks where they learn strategies to help themselves be understood. Once they finish the program, they can join a group with other individuals with Parkinson’s to practice the skills they have learned in therapy. 

During each session, clients perform exercises like projecting their voice outward or holding out syllables in a word for extended time to work on building a sense of intent. Using their voices in this intentional manner can help clients to counteract weakening of their voices that can occur with Parkinson's. These exercises are meant to engage the client’s active thinking about how they use their voice and breath to project a strong speaking voice.

The program also provides clients with home-based strategies and online practice opportunities to facilitate their success. Speech-language pathologists collaborate directly with both clients and caregivers, teaching them techniques focused on improving breathing and swallowing. These interventions are important for reducing the risk of aspiration pneumonia, which can be a significant health risk and cause mortality among people with Parkinson’s disease.

An opportunity for graduate students

The grant also provides a significant professional development opportunity for graduate students in the speech-language pathology program to develop clinical skills in addressing Parkinson's-related speech and voice symptoms. They receive thorough training and work closely with the Davis Center’s clinical supervisors to use the SPEAK OUT! techniques and materials while also customizing the sessions to the needs and interests of the clients. “Each client receives highly personalized treatment from a collaborative team of clinicians and graduate students,” says Fairchild.

The SPEAK OUT! Program provides the Davis Center with free or discounted training for speech-language pathologists and graduate students in the University of Minnesota Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Science as well as at-home therapy materials, including online webinars, workbooks and flashcards. 

Carrie Slag says that “the idea of the intent and the cognitive aspects,” of the SPEAK OUT! program were a huge selling point for their staff as they considered applying for the grant. Many of the cognitive aspects include exercises such as saying the alphabet backwards, listing items that start with a specific letter, or completing a common phrase, which all help with some of the most basic cognitive abilities like remembering patterns and lists. 

By helping people with Parkinson’s regain their speaking confidence, the Davis Center does more than provide speech therapy—it restores their agency and ability to participate more fully in their lives. This work helps build a more inclusive community where people can be heard, literally and figuratively. Through the partnership among the clients, clinicians, and graduate students, professional expertise and compassionate care and help people maintain their voice in the world.

 

Content creator Joy Edwards contributed to the story.

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