JoAnn Silkes, Ph.D., CCC-SLP

Chair, Evidence-Based Clinical Research Committee

The Evidence-Based Clinical Research (EBCR) Committee has been hard at work!  If you’re not familiar with the EBCR Committee, our focus is on integrating and synthesizing the literature on neurogenic communication disorders to make it easily accessible to clinicians and/or identify areas in which further research is needed.  This work generally takes the form of systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and scoping reviews that are then published in various journals.

We currently have 8 writing groups: Aphasia, Apraxia, Motor Speech Disorders, Pediatric Motor Speech Disorders, Diverse Populations, TBI, Right Hemisphere Disorders, and Progressive Neurological Disorders.  Each writing group comprises 1-2 leaders with expertise in the topic and teams of 4-7 members.  Teams include researchers, clinicians, and students.  These groups first identify an area that needs investigation, then spend months — or years — identifying, gathering, reviewing, analyzing, and interpreting the literature before writing for publication.  I encourage you to explore the ANCDS-Authored Reviews list that is available on the ANCDS website.

One example of this work can be seen in a project currently underway by our TBI writing group.  This group was interested in investigating the role of the therapeutic alliance between SLPs and clients with cognitive-communication disorders.  They initially intended to do a meta-analysis but, after a thorough literature review, realized that there is not enough literature available for the purpose, so they are currently writing a summary of the current state of the literature with research and clinical recommendations.  They plan to have this submitted for publication within the next few months.

Other topics currently being addressed include methods of assessing motor speech disorders in children, language and pragmatic disorders after right hemisphere stroke, a scoping review of the available literature on neurogenic communication disorders in Black individuals, and a review of treatments for velopharyngeal insufficiency in dysarthria.

There’s lots of great work going on, so stay tuned!