Sustainable Development Goals - Speech Pathology Australia podcast

Today Julie Marshall and I received an email from Nadia Marussinszky, Professional Education Senior Officer and Speak Up Podcast producer at Speech Pathology Australia. She wrote:

"From time to time Speech Pathology Australia will re-broadcast an episode, and to add a different angle to this we ask speech pathologists to select a previous episode to re-run, and then to share a brief, introductory reflection. I wanted to let you know that one of the members of our conference planning committee for 2025 has chosen the episode you recorded about the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and recorded a reflection to introduce the episode. We will rebroadcast this in June this year...Once the episode has been re-broadcast we will send over a copy of the social media image SPA are using to promote the episode and link to the episode...

I also thought you might like to know that the episode has been streamed 3,946 times since publication! The information and guidance you shared has reached a lot of people, thank you for sharing it!"

Here are some of the resources that Speech Pathology Australia will share with the podcast: 

• IJSLP Issue on Communication, Swallowing, and the Sustainable Development Goals: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/iasl20/25/1  
• SPA introduction to the special issue of the IJSLP: https://www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au/Members/News-and-publications/Publications/Speak-Out-Articles/Latest/Communication-swallowing-S-D-G.aspx 
• United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: https://sdgs.un.org/goals 

Sustainable Development Goals - Contributions to CSU's report

Charles Sturt University has just released their Sustainability Development Goals Report. The report highlights the university’s continued commitment to environmental and social sustainability.

Here is the CSU media release: https://news.csu.edu.au/latest-news/charles-sturt-university-releases-sustainability-development-goals-report

Here is the report: https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/files/552252729/M3125_SDG_REPORT_2023_WEB_FINAL_VERSION_2.pdf

We are featured on pages 18 and 67

SUBMITTED - Two papers for the International Conference on Sustainable Development (ICSD)

Today I submitted two 9 page papers for the International Conference on Sustainable Development (ICSD). Our abstracts were accepted for presentation some time ago, and today was the submission date for the full papers. The conference will be held in September. Our papers are titled: 

• Communication for all: Amplifying all voices for SDG achievement 
• Listening to children’s communication: Partnership for the goals (SDG17)

Communication disability in low- and middle-income countries: A call to action

The following manuscript has been accepted for publication:

Marshall, J. E., Wylie, K., McLeod, S., Barrett, H., McAllister, L., Atherton, M., Hettiarachchi, S., Owusu, N. A. (2024, in press May) Communication disability in low- and middle-income countries: A call to action. BMJ Global Health.

Summary: 

• "Communication disability is a common but under-reported and often neglected part of health, rehabilitation and disability services, despite communication being a human right.
• Communication disability has far-reaching impacts throughout life.
• Innovation is required in contexts where services for people with communication disability are limited - particularly low and middle-income countries.
• Local and national governments, funders/commissioners, communication disability experts, universities, non-government organisations, communities, health, social care, rehabilitation services and education sectors all have a role to play in putting communication disability on the global disability/ (re)habilitation agenda.

This paper took many years to write and get published - mostly because it is not easy to distill important research with clarity. I worked on a version while at Manchester Metropolitan University last year. I am very glad it has been accepted and thank Julie Marshall and Karen Wylie for leading this paper.

This work speaks to the World Health Organization's Global report on health equity for persons with disabilities https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240063600