Birgitta Rosén-Gustafsson
Vice-présidente chargée de la prévention
E-mail : birgitta.rosen.gustafsson@swipnet.se

As Vice-President responsible of the Prevention Commission I would like to speak about the work in our group.
As our knowledge about speech and language disorders has increased during the past 10-15 years and research has allowed continual refining of early screening methods, prevention activities play a more and more important role in our work. Furthermore both ethical and socio-economical reasons oblige us to give prevention a major focus. If we can detect speech and language disorders at an early age and treat them in time, the consequences (of for example a delayed language development), become less serious.

According to the World Health Organisation, Prevention can be divided in three levels:

 

1. PRIMARY PREVENTION:

relates to all activities aimed at "reducing the incidence of a disease within a population and therefore reducing, whenever possible, the risks of new cases". In the area of speech and language this means mainly information and health education, as well as training of all those professionals dealing with a specific population.

 

2. SECONDARY PREVENTION:

relates to all activities aimed "at reducing the prevalence of disease and therefore reducing the time of evolution". Concerning speech and language, this means mainly screening and early detection of disorders. Early detection and treatment may lead to the elimination of the disorder or to the reduction of the disorder’s progress.

 

3. TERTIARY PREVENTION:

In 1995 the Prevention committee started its work on prevention by setting up a survey of the current state of play in prevention of language disorders in children and adults. The survey was conducted between 1995 and –97.

In the end of 1996 a European Day of Speech and Language Therapy was organised with different activities throughout Europe .

Since November 1998 the chairman of the Prevention committee has had a place in the Executive committee of CPLOL, which wasn’t the case before that time.

Our committee now consists of members from all the countries in the European Union (except Spain) as well as observer members from Cyprus and Switzerland.

Our work since -98 has first of all been to finish the Prevention Report., i e the survey already mentioned from 1995 to –97 concerning common tools used for screening and detecting language disorders in children and adults. Last year we finished it and since a few months it’s available printed, also possible to buy at this congress. The study was lead by Jean-Marc Kremer, France, who was the former leader of this committee.

Since last year we have three new ongoing projects in our commission. This means we have decided to have 3 subgroup leaders within the committee, as we think this is an efficient way of working. In that way we hope to realise different projects faster as all members work actively in one (or even in two) subgroups.

One main idea with our work in CPLOL is to make contacts between colleagues in different countries easier. That’s why we’ve decided to start a "publication project".

The aim is to exchange experiences between colleagues from the different countries within the EU. First of all we’ve asked colleagues through the national logopedic associations to send us abstracts about smaller or larger projects concerning prevention in young children (0-6 years) and/or in adult voice-patients.

The abstracts should be written in English and/or French. Articles in the national language are accepted only under the condition that the summary is in at least one of the two CPLOL languages. The commission does not want to discourage the authors by asking them to write the whole abstract in both English and French, as we know that all members of course don't speak both languages. Perhaps, it will be possible to have translators in the future, so that all contributions will be available in both languages.

These abstracts have been put on the CPLOL Website in a specific Prevention part, where people can read them and find the name of a contact person in order to obtain more information on a specific project. In this way we hope that both colleagues and other involved persons from different countries will be able to share their knowledge and experiences. We think it’s important that not only scientific projects are published but also smaller projects from everyday work in the logopedic field. Anyone who wants to send in an abstract for publishing on the web, will find how to do this if you look at the CPLOL Prevention web.

The subgroup leader of this project is Joachim Schwalbach from Germany.

The next project we call the Poster project. The aim of this project is the production of a poster, which can be used in all the countries in the EU. The poster will describe the different stages of early language development (in children aged 0-4) and will also be illustrated and present advice to parents about what to do when a baby's language is not developing normally; who to contact etc.

The design of the poster will be the same in every country but each national association will translate the texts into its own language. The poster is meant to be used in Child Health Care-centres, pre-schools, schools, hospitals.

We are trying to obtain a subsidy for this project from the European Union at present. Probably it will take some time as the rules for applications are a little complicated. However our plan is to continue the work with a new poster about older children’s language, while waiting for the grants.

The model of the poster we’ve adopted from the French leaflet "Objectif langage".

The subgroup leader for this project is Marie-Annick Chryssomalis from Greece.

This third project is just beginning. The aim is to produce a document containing guidelines for prevention in the field of speech and language to be later adopted by the General Assembly of CPLOL.

All members of the commission have received a proposal with guidelines for prevention. During our meeting yesterday we’ve discussed these guidelines, trying to make an agreement on common guidelines in all EU countries.

Raffaella Citro, Italy is the subgroup leader of this project.