| Evidence-Based Practice Guidelines Groups |
ACNDS has five active Evidence-Based Practice Guidelines Groups: Apraxia of Speech, Aphasia, Dementia, Dysarthria, and Traumatic Brain Injury. These committees were established in 2001 with support from the ASHA Executive Board of ASHA, ASHA SIG2, and the Department of Veterans Affairs National Speech-Language Pathology Organization. The scope of the groups was to examine practices related to treatment research and produce documents to disseminate in professional venues. The committees met this goal and continue to generate high quality review of scientific evidence related to assessment and treatment in order to, “link application of betters practices as suggested by the research literature and expert opinion, with the clinical ‘realities’ of service delivery.” (Golper et al., 2001, p. 9). The products of these efforts are posted on the ANCDS website and also appear in other professional journals.
This year each committee has been hard at work further investigating clinical research in management of communication disorders in neurologically impaired individuals. The list of recently published documents and current efforts appears below.
| Committee | Publication of Project |
| Aphasia | Conducting a systematic review of reading interventions on reading comprehension |
| Apraxia of Speech | Ballard, Wambaugh, Duffy, Layfield, Maas, Mauszycki & McNeil (2015) Treatment for acquired Apraxia of Speech: A systematic review of intervention research between 2004 and 2012. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 24, 668-678. |
| Dementia | (1) Reconstituting membership
(2) Hooper, Bourgeois, Pimentel, Qualls, Hickey, Frymark & Schooling (2012). An evidence-based systematic review on cognitive interventions for individuals with dementia. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 22, 126-145. |
| Dysarthria | Hanson, Yorkston & Britton (2011). Dysarthria in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: A systematic review of characteristics, speech treatment, and augmentative and alternative communication options. Journal of Medical Speech-Language Pathology, 19, 12-30. |
| TBI | (1) O-Neil-Pirozzi, Kennedy, & Sohlberg (in press). Evidence-based practice for the use of internal strategies as a memory compensation technique after brain injury: A systematic review. Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation.
(2) Developing a clinical implementation overlay to demonstrate evidence-supported communication approaches: Create the template and target internal memory strategies. |
In addition, the committees have been considering the topic of implementation science and how ANCDS might contribute to information dissemination in this arena. We welcome your thoughts on implementation science and the role it may play within ANCDS. We also welcome additional members for the committees so if you have an interest in joining one of the committees, please send me an email at [email protected].
Janet Patterson, PhD