Unveiling the UCF Health Aphasia House Program: A Comprehensive Approach to Restoring Communication

Aphasia, a language disorder resulting from damage to the brain, can profoundly impact an individual's ability to communicate, affecting every facet of their life. The UCF Health Aphasia House offers an intensive, comprehensive therapy program designed to empower individuals with aphasia to achieve their communication goals, regardless of how long they have lived with the condition. Whether it's conversing with grandchildren or confidently ordering a meal at their favorite restaurant, the Aphasia House is dedicated to helping clients regain their voice and reconnect with the world around them.

Personalized Therapy Tailored to Individual Needs

The UCF Health Aphasia House utilizes the latest clinical research to create a personalized course of therapy for everyone they serve. Recognizing that each individual's experience with aphasia is unique, the program emphasizes a tailored approach that addresses specific challenges and aspirations. This personalized approach ensures that clients receive the most effective and relevant support to maximize their progress.

Dan, whose wife Marla experienced expressive aphasia after a stroke, noted that "The therapy here fits Marla’s learning style to a tee." This sentiment underscores the program's commitment to adapting its methods to suit each client's individual needs and learning preferences.

A Home-Like Environment for Enhanced Therapy

The Aphasia House provides speech-language therapy in a setting distinct from a typical medical office. Each room is outfitted to resemble a familiar space in a home, including a kitchen, garden patio, and garage. The rooms are designed to encourage natural conversations. This unique environment fosters a sense of comfort and familiarity, promoting more relaxed and natural communication. The design of the Aphasia House is intentional, aiming to create a space where clients feel at ease and encouraged to practice their communication skills in realistic scenarios.

In one of the therapy rooms known as the “attic,” bookshelves are filled with the kind of tchotchkes one might find in a spare bedroom or, you guessed it, an attic. The ability to tell a story - or “scripting” - was a vital component of Marla’s therapy, Dan said.

Janet Whiteside, Ph.D., the founding director of the Aphasia House, recalled her experience as a graduate student at Vanderbilt University, where she "saw how effective the use of a home environment was during therapy for children who were deaf or hard of hearing." This experience inspired her to create a similar environment at the Aphasia House, believing that it would enhance the therapeutic process for individuals with aphasia.

Interprofessional Collaboration for Comprehensive Care

The UCF Health Aphasia House embraces a collaborative approach to care, bringing together professionals from various disciplines to provide comprehensive support to clients and their families. Graduate social work students are now serving alongside communication sciences and disorders (CSD) student clinicians at the UCF Health Aphasia House as part of a new interprofessional learning opportunity designed to provide additional support to stroke survivors and their families while teaching students more about the value of comprehensive interprofessional rehabilitative care.

Angela Ziegler, a clinical instructor in the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, emphasizes the importance of this collaborative approach: "Speech pathology is an incredible field, and we do important work, but without social work, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and other healthcare providers to help drive the engine, the car’s just not going to go as far as it could."

The program, which began in Spring 2024, aims to offer support for the caregivers of patients seeking treatment at the Aphasia House. Caregivers can participate in individual therapy sessions with social work graduate students while their loved one receives six weeks of intensive speech-language therapy from Aphasia House student clinicians from the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders.

Pettway, a social work student participating in her field experience at the Aphasia House, attends clients’ speech-language therapy treatment sessions and weekly staffing meetings where she learns from CSD student clinicians about the challenges people with aphasia face and how those challenges could impact progress. "This position, even within my third month, has already taught me a lot since I am the sole social worker here at the moment," Pettway says.

Read also: Alumni House Renovation

Addressing the Needs of Caregivers

Recognizing the significant role that caregivers play in the recovery process, the Aphasia House program extends its support to family members and loved ones. Last year, CSD and MSW students attended several focus groups with patient families to better understand their needs as caregivers, and the effectiveness of the social work services provided. Caregivers can participate in individual therapy sessions with social work graduate students while their loved one receives speech-language therapy.

Rachel Potvin, who unexpectedly took on a caregiver role after her husband experienced a stroke, initially felt that the support services were solely for her husband. However, she soon realized the value of having dedicated support for herself as a caregiver.

Zeigler, who has more than a decade of experience working in inpatient rehabilitation and acute care of adults who have suffered neurological injuries, says support for care providers is just as essential to provide the best quality care.

Access to Assistive Technology

The Aphasia House ensures that clients have access to the tools and resources they need to overcome communication barriers. At the client’s initial evaluation, clinicians administer a hearing screening and can provide a comprehensive audiology exam and offer loaner hearing devices to those who need them. Additionally, the Florida Alliance for Assistive Services and Technology Atlantic Region Demonstration Center (FAAST ARDC) affords clients access to a variety of assistive technology to improve client’s lives across all domains, including adaptive gaming equipment, speech generating devices, kitchen and home aids. FAAST provides Aphasia House clients with access to free assistive technology demonstrations, trainings, loans, and information and assistance services throughout their stay.

Research and Innovation

The Aphasia and Related Conditions (ARC) Research Lab, directed by Dr. Lauren Bislick Wilson (PhD, CCC-SLP, CBIS), is an integral part of the UCF Health Aphasia House. The ARC Research Lab's goal is to conduct research to better understand the complex processing of speech and language and its breakdown in people with aphasia and apraxia of speech. They strive to develop new and explore effective treatment approaches.

Read also: Old North End Landmark

The laboratory is always recruiting for participants to partake in research studies and makes a concerted effort to publish findings in respected academic journals and present at regional, national, and international conferences.

Examples of research projects include:

Exploring the impact of two feedback types on speech intelligibility, precision, and naturalness.
Dual tasking in individuals with post-stroke aphasia: A scoping review protocol.
The benefits of a yoga practice for people with aphasia: A feasibility study.
Aphasia and friendship: Stroke survivors’ self-reported changes over time.
Caregiving and friendship: Perspectives from care partners of people with aphasia.
Respondent Burden and Readability of Patient-Reported Outcome Measures for People with Aphasia.
Finding “zen” in Aphasia: The Role of Yoga in the Post-Stroke Journey of Two Survivors.
Aphasia and Friendship: The Role and Perspectives of Speech-Language Pathologists.
Caregiver-proxy & individual with aphasia self-report agreement on subjective domains.
A phonomotor approach to apraxia of speech treatment.
Increasing resilience in people with post-stroke aphasia and co-survivors using mind-body approaches.
Perceptual characteristics of consonant production in apraxia of speech and aphasia.
The influence of phonomotor treatment on word retrieval: Insights from naming errors.
Do linguistic and nonlinguistic characteristics predict generalization and maintenance following Phonomotor Treatment in twenty-six individuals with aphasia?
The nature of error consistency in individuals with apraxia of speech and aphasia.

Intensive Aphasia Program Details

Research has shown that personalized intensive therapy is especially effective in treating aphasia, so each client spends four hours a day, four days a week working directly with one or more student clinicians. Whiteside closely monitors the therapy sessions, noting the clients’ progress and ways to adjust the therapies, which she shares with the students. The Intensive Aphasia Program will be conducted six times a year in The Aphasia House.

Giving Back Through Philanthropy

The Aphasia House has a long-standing relationship with the Scott Coopersmith Stroke Awareness Foundation (SCSAF). The foundation recently awarded funding for two young stroke survivors who needed intensive services but were financially unable to participate in the program without external support. SCSAF is incredibly thankful for the partnership with the UCF Aphasia House and values the work that both students and faculty and staff do for stroke survivors. It is their mission to provide support for local survivors and were happy to approve the grant requests for these two applicants.

Understanding Aphasia, Apraxia, and Dysarthria

It is important to differentiate between aphasia and other related communication disorders:

Aphasia: A disorder that results from damage to the parts of the brain that control language and speech. Aphasia is not a loss of intellect but rather a loss or impairment of language. Aphasia may occur after a stroke, brain tumor, trauma, or disease that affects the brain tissue. Persons with aphasia can regain some of their language loss with treatment. Approximately one million people in the United States, or one out of every 275 adults, have some type of aphasia, according to the National Aphasia Association.
Apraxia of Speech (AOS): A disorder that impairs the intelligibility of speech after an acquired brain injury. It affects the coordination needed to speak clearly.
Dysarthria: Another type of speech disorder associated with brain injury. It affects the muscles needed for speech resulting in decreased intelligibility.

A Dream Realized

The Aphasia House is a dream-come-true for its director, Janet Whiteside, a clinical educator at UCF and Chair of the Board of Clinical Educators at the UCF Communication Disorders Clinic. The facility is conveniently located in the Central Florida Research Park’s Research Pavilion. Thanks to a donation, Whiteside brought the first group of clients to the house one summer.

tags: #ucf #aphasia #house #program #details