Community Impact Grants 2025
Announcing Four GSHFoundation Community Impact Grant Recipients
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We are delighted to announce the winners of the Community Impact Grants for 2025. These grants were awarded to experts in the field of speech-language pathology and audiology who, through innovation and application, promote community engagement of students and professional staff and facilitate high social impact to individuals with speech, language, cognitive, swallowing, or hearing disorders.
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Check back in Fall 2025 for the next Community Impact Grant opportunity!
CONGRATS TO THE 2025 COMMUNITY IMPACT GRANT RECIPIENTS!
Ainsley Vergara & Beth Stewart
"Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same thing, but learning another way to think about things."
~ Flora Lewis
Ainsley Vergara & Beth Stewart
Setting the Stage for Lifelong Learning: Early Literacy Resources for Young Children and Their Families
The purpose of this project is to facilitate high social impact for children at risk for hearing and language disorders while promoting community engagement of speech-language pathology (SLP) students. The award will support us in providing supervised, no-cost school-based screenings and supervised, low-cost comprehensive diagnostic evaluations for children at risk for hearing and/or language disorders. The project’s impact is twofold: it will enable efficient identification of children with hearing and/or language disorders and it will prepare future SLPs to implement best practices for assessment in hearing screening and language diagnostics.​
Three Impacts:
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Offer language-rich experiences/opportunities for bilingual children aged 3-5
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Provide educational opportunities and support to caregivers of multilingual children
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Promote effective collaboration between student clinicians and student interpreters and encourage reflection on cultural humility.
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Laura Abercrombie & Matt Carter
Communication access for persons with aphasia is a human right.
Laura Abercrombie & Matt Carter
Valdosta State University Sensory Safe Environment
The Valdosta State University Speech and Hearing Clinic is developing a sensory room that will enhance access to high-quality, evidence-based intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder and other related conditions. This new space will provide a calming, individualized environment that supports sensory regulation, allowing clients to engage in speech, language, and feeding services more effectively. The sensory room will also serve as a crucial training tool for VSU's speech-language pathology graduate students, equipping them with the skills needed to provide neuro-affirming care and positively impact communities across Georgia.
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Three Impacts:
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Initiating an “Aphasia Friendly Atlanta” campaign will promote the independence of persons with aphasia.
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This campaign will contribute to the generation of revenue for Atlanta entities that will better serve persons with aphasia, their family, and friends.
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This campaign will increase the social engagement of persons with aphasia by creating entities that are communicatively accessible to them.
Dr. Levi Ofoe & Jenny Gordon
An efficient and effective feeding/swallowing system forms the cornerstone of cognitive, speech, and language development.
Dr. Levi Ofoe & Jenny Gordon
Comprehensive Screening of Pediatric Feeding Disorders
This project aims to guide graduate speech-language pathology students in screening for feeding disorders in pre-kindergarten children at the Early Learning Center in Carroll County. Clinical supervisors will train students to conduct pediatric feeding screenings. This project will be completed in two phases: First, parents will complete standardized feeding questionnaires about their child’s eating behaviors. Second, the students will use age-appropriate foods to directly assess the children’s oral-motor control, feeding, and swallowing skills. The students will then compare parent-report information and their observations to inform clinical knowledge and provide evidence-based guidance to help parents with early intervention. Our goal is to extend the program to other early learning centers in the county and beyond.​
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Three Impacts:
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Train graduate speech-language pathology students to conduct comprehensive feeding screenings (i.e., parent reports and direct observations) in pre-kindergarten children.
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Improve early detection and intervention mechanisms for feeding disorders in young children.
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Increase awareness and empower local families with the knowledge and resources needed to seek timely professional support for atypical feeding behaviors, foster healthier families and communities, and potentially reduce the burden on healthcare systems.
Hannah Krimm
Hannah Krimm and Dr. Alison Morrison
Hearing and Language Assessment for School-Age Children
The purpose of this project is to facilitate high social impact for children at risk for hearing and language disorders while promoting community engagement of speech-language pathology (SLP) students. The award will support us in providing supervised, no-cost school-based screenings and supervised, low-cost comprehensive diagnostic evaluations for children at risk for hearing and/or language disorders. The project’s impact is twofold: it will enable efficient identification of children with hearing and/or language disorders and it will prepare future SLPs to implement best practices for assessment in hearing screening and language diagnostics.
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Three Impacts:
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Provide no-cost hearing and language screening for elementary school children.
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Provide low-cost comprehensive diagnostic evaluations for children identified through screenings as at-risk for hearing loss and/or language disorders.
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Improve future SLPs’ ability to implement best practices for screening and comprehensive diagnostic evaluation.
Untreated hearing loss in adults is associated with lower quality of life as well as increased risk for cognitive decline. Withsupport from the GSHA Community Impact Grant, we are confident that we can increase the quality of life for manypatients from the Hispanic and Latinx community in the Athens, GA area, by supporting awareness of and access to hearinghealth care services.
