Iowa Stuttering Lab

🔥 Hot off the press 🔥

Lab director Dr. Naomi Rodgers has received her first NIH grant! This award is funded through the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD). In addition to learning about clinical trials, implementation science, and school-based research, she’ll be leading the first-ever randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a stutter-affirming therapy for children who stutter called “Avoidance Reduction Therapy for Stuttering” (ARTS). This intervention study will take place in the schools, as this is the setting where most children who stutter receive speech therapy and has the potential to make the biggest impact.

Why this research matters? The current evidence base for school-age stuttering therapy is dismal. Our field has been talking about “stutter-affirming therapy” but there has yet to be an RCT (the highest level of research) to support its use. As a result, most SLPs rely on status quo practices that narrowly focus on increasing speech fluency. Not only is true fluency not directly targetable in therapy, but fluency-first therapy fails to address the totality of children’s stuttering experience and can be detrimental to their mental health.

The purpose of this project is to address this public health issue by training school SLPs to provide stutter-affirming intervention to 7-12 year olds and assess its effects on children’s communication well-being. After the clinical trial is complete, we will solicit feedback from the students, SLPs, teachers, and parents about the facilitators and barriers to implementing ARTS in the schools. This will lay the groundwork for addressing specific barriers to implementation in future research so more SLPs can feel confident providing stutter-affirming therapy.