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UTEP Free Speech Therapy Clinic Serves Nearly 100 Individuals

Last Updated on July 19, 2022 at 12:00 AM

Originally published July 19, 2022

By MC Staff

UTEP Marketing and Communications

Summer sessions offered as a resource for individuals with communication disorders

A summer speech therapy clinic run by students and faculty members from UTEP’s Speech, Language and Hearing Clinic will end its inaugural run this week after helping nearly 100 members of the community at no cost. Photo by JR Hernandez / UTEP Marketing and Communications
A summer speech therapy clinic run by students and faculty members from UTEP’s Speech, Language and Hearing Clinic ended its inaugural run last week after helping nearly 100 members of the community at no cost. Photo by JR Hernandez / UTEP Marketing and Communications

A summer speech therapy clinic run by students and faculty members from The University of Texas at El Paso ended its inaugural run this week after helping nearly 100 members of the community at no cost. The group sessions were offered as a resource for individuals with communication disorders to much needed speech-language therapy services in English and Spanish.

The sessions, which were offered for the first time through UTEP’s Speech, Language and Hearing Clinic, have been especially important for those individuals who do not have health insurance or who have exhausted their health insurance benefits, said Deena G. Peterson, clinical instructor in UTEP’s Speech-Language Pathology (SLP) Program.

“The Speech, Language and Hearing Clinic allows graduate student clinicians an opportunity to apply their academic knowledge to clinical practice” said Peterson, who is coordinating the sessions. “We have limited availability each semester, which leaves us with a long wait list. By offering group sessions, we can meet the needs of our community in a larger capacity and maximize learning opportunities to our students.”

Since June 27, 2022, the clinic offered weekly sessions in the University’s Campbell building at 1101 N. Campbell Street. The focus has been on groups with different communication disorders each week, including children with a diagnosis of autism or apraxia of speech, persons with Down’s Syndrome, and teens/adolescents with social communication needs. To date, 73 people have participated in the summer program along with 29 SLP students.

The last group sessions targeted individuals 18 years and older experiencing communication difficulties related to aphasia, traumatic brain injury and social communication. The workshops also included participants from the Down Syndrome Coalition for El Paso. Separate sessions for teens focused on their communication skills.

UTEP’s Speech, Language and Hearing Clinic in the College of Health Sciences is a teaching clinic that delivers free quality diagnostic and therapeutic services in English and Spanish to UTEP students, faculty, staff and their families as well as for community members with communication disorders. UTEP’s SLP program is one of a few bilingual programs nationally to offer a certificate in Bilingual Speech-Language Pathology.

The clinic also provides hands-on training for graduate students in the SLP program. Student clinicians offer diagnostic and therapeutic services to children and adults with various types of communicative disorders such as articulation, language, fluency, voice, and hearing under the direct supervision of faculty.

For information on UTEP’s Speech, Language and Hearing Clinic, click here.

About The University of Texas at El Paso

The University of Texas at El Paso is America’s leading Hispanic-serving university. Located at the westernmost tip of Texas, where three states and two countries converge along the Rio Grande, 94% of our more than 24,000 students are minorities, and half are the first in their families to go to college. UTEP offers 168 bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs at the only open-access, top-tier research university in America.