UT Health San Antonio Speech-Language Pathology program graduate students are helping local kids at risk for developing a language disorder through a program called LAUNCH. Angela Kennedy, SLP-D, CCC-SLP, is the director of clinical education and an assistant professor for the Speech-Language Pathology program in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders.
“We take graduate students out into these communities and implement a two-week intensive program on site, in apartment complexes,” Kennedy said.
Assistant Professor
Director of Clinical Education for the Speech-Language Pathology program
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
“So the children are able to come and attend programs in which we focus heavily on narrative language skills and their grammatical skills, and we do that in a fun and engaging way," said Kennedy.
The LAUNCH program offers summer language and literacy enrichment for these kids.
“We also offer parent trainings in the evenings, where we provide meals for families, and then the children and the families come in," added Kennedy. "We're equipping parents with how to read with their children, how to encourage literacy within the home.”
The kids learn, but Kennedy said the graduate students may learn even more.
“The hands-on experiential learning of being in a community, serving and seeing the social determinants of health, and then the impact it can have is positively impacting their view, and then their future practice as speech pathologists,” she said.
This summer was LAUNCH’s third summer in San Antonio, but Kennedy said she has much bigger plans for the program.
“This is the beginning of what we hope to be establishing a protocol in a program that can be reproducible across first the state of Texas and then across the nation,” she said.
Watching the children and the students learn from each other reminds Kennedy of why she got into this field in the first place.
“I don't know if there are words or exclamation points or enough emojis,” she said, adding, “This work. It matters.”
Science & Medicine is a collaboration between TPR and The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio that explores how scientific discovery in San Antonio advances the way medicine is practiced everywhere.