DEPARTMENT OF PLASTIC SURGERY
International Outreach
Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery News
Smile Train To Offer Free, World-Class Speech Symposium In China
Summer 2002
from the Fast Track the Official Partner Newsletter of The Smile Train
The Smile Train is honored to be hosting the first ever Symposium on the Principles of Speech Pathology for Children with Cleft Lip and Palate in Qingdao, China June 7-9, 2002. More than 200 medical professionals are expected to attend this three-day conference which has a first-class, East-West faculty which includes some of the most respected speech therapy experts in the world. The conference will feature keynote presentations by two of our Medical Advisory Board Members: Linda D'Antonio, PhD, and Jeffrey Marsh, MD, as well as eight accomplished cleft surgeons and speech pathologists from China and the US. In addition, the conference will conduct hands-on workshops and panel discussions for all its attendees.
"This is an exciting step for The Smile Train as we go beyond surgical training and start to support the other specialties that are so crucial to team care," says DeLois Greenwood, Vice President of The Smile Train.
The symposium has been initiated by Smile Train Medical Advisory Board Member Linda D'Antonio, PhD.
"The recognition of speech therapy as an integral part of rehabilitating the child with a cleft in China is growing every single day and the interest in this symposium has been over whelming," says Dr. D'Antonio. "If we can kindle this interest and this spark, and if we can help these medical professionals get started, this will have an enormous impact on the quality of cleft care throughout China in the years to come."
The Smile Train provides free cleft surgery for more than 15,000 poor children a year in China. Thousands of these children desperately need speech therapy so that they can learn to speak normally. But, unfortunately, there are very few speech therapists in China. This is the significant challenge that The Smile Train faces in providing care for these children and the reason why this symposium is so important.
For more information on the The Smile Train, please visit their web site at www.SmileTrain.org.