The Honors of the ANCDS is the highest award bestowed by the academy. It is awarded to those who have displayed excellence in clinical assessment and treatment, research, mentorship, teaching, and service to the community and to the ANCDS. This year, the ANCDS is honoring an individual who, for 44 years, has made significant contributions to individuals who have neurologic communication disorders.

Written By: Jacqueline Hinckley, Ph.D., BC-ANCDS

In 2020, ANCDS released a statement in support of Black Lives and made a commitment to diversity following the death of George Floyd and rising issues of racial injustices voiced by persons within and outside of the field of speech-language pathology. In this statement, we reaffirmed our commitment to fairness and equity within the organization and pledged to establish a committee to focus on diversity and inclusion. The ANCDS Ad Hoc Committee on Diversity & Inclusion has been formed and is ready for action!

The first time I treated someone with known COVID-19, a patient in the ICU, I distinctly remember thinking, It’s here, right now. It’s here in this room with us. Another entity: The patient, myself, the speech-language pathologist who was orienting me as a new hospital employee, and the Newly Described Thing. Despite a definite diagnosis, despite knowing that diagnosis before entering the room, there was nonetheless a slow moment of reconciliation for me, where I had read about the Thing, I had heard about it, but to be in a room with it was wholly other. There was a feeling of matter for me then, of the voluminous—that is, this invisible Thing was crowding in—and inevitably that matter, that feeling of the voluminous, they ached and continue to ache with multiple meanings.