Communication Disabilities: Making Conversations Accessible to All (HLOL #255)

Health Literacy Out Loud Podcast

Adena Dacy, MS, CCC-SLP is a speech-language pathologist. For many years, she worked with people of all ages who have communication disabilities. Dacy now is an Associate Director on the Health Care Services Team at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). Her areas of interest include health literacy and access to quality care for people with speech, language, voice, hearing and/or cognitive difficulties.

Judy Crane had a long and successful career in medical services and sales. This work was abruptly cut short when she had a dissected aorta followed by a stroke. One of her residual effects is post-stroke aphasia. Crane is now an active advocate for people with aphasia and serves on numerous committees and programs as a patient advisor, volunteer, and staff member. In 2021, Judy Crane was awarded the Stroke Survivor Hero Award by the American Stroke Association.

Listen as Adena Dacy and Judy Crane talk with Helen Osborne about:

• Communication disabilities. What this term means, who it includes, and how these disabilities can affect people across the lifespan.
• Judy’s story of how communication disabilities can affect a person’s health understanding and outcomes.
• Strategies to help make health conversations accessible to all. These are part of ASHA’s Communication ACCESS campaign: Ask, Communicate directly, Confirm understanding, Eliminate distractions, Slow down, Support interactions.

More ways to learn:

• ASHA (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association)
• ACCESS: Better Health Starts with Effective Communication
• National Aphasia Association
• “Health literacy interventions in adult speech and language therapy: A scoping review,” by McKenna V.B. and Gilheaney O., published in Health Expectations, 2023.

Read a transcript of this podcast.

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