9th International World Congress on Fluency Disorders

Univ Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

Project Summary This grant seeks support for graduate student and early career faculty travel to attend the 9th World Congress on Fluency Disorders, to be held July 13-16, 2018 at the International Conference Center in Hiroshima, Japan. The IFA World Congresses have a long and distinguished history going back almost 30 years, and have long attracted both senior and junior researchers and clinician attendance. It publishes proceedings, and many Congress contributions have gone on to both publication and citation in other research publications. For 2018, the World Congress has taken two major steps in new directions: it will for the first time locate the Congress in Asia, and join with the Japanese Society of Stuttering and Other Fluency Disorders to broaden diversity of attendance and impact. This advance, however, may pose some financial obstacles to attendance by younger members of the research community, thus prompting the current application for support. The second major step is to join with other major organizations to broaden participation and impact: the International Cluttering Association, the International Stuttering Association and the Japanese Stuttering Genyukai Organization. Of note, the last two groups represent consumer advocacy groups working on behalf of people who stutter (PWS) and their families. This inclusion is meant to strengthen the development of Patient/Person-Centered-Care approaches most closely meeting the needs of PWS. The need for junior researcher attendance at the World Congress is of significant importance, given the declining numbers of faculty researchers in communication sciences and disorders, in the United States and abroad, and in fluency disorders specifically. Past meetings have greatly contributed to the development of early career investigators who have gone on to achieve well in their research, publication and funding careers. This meeting will also offer students and early career faculty a workshop to develop grantsmanship and publication skills. It will also host a workshop designed to mediate consumer group, researcher and clinician viewpoints on research needs in fluency disorders. Taken together, this move in location and in inclusion of additional groups of dedicated researchers, clinicians and patient advocates should result in high quality proceedings and peer-reviewed research publications. It should also facilitate long-term health impacts in understanding and treating fluency disorders that will continue the positive contributions made by IFA Congresses over the past three decades.