Overcoming Language Barriers in Healthcare for Stroke Patients with Aphasia: Adaptation of the Language Screening Test for Aphasia into Modern Greek

Presenter: Julian T. Economou

Faculty Sponsor: Whitney Postman

School: Worcester State University

Research Area: Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences

Session: Poster Session 2, 11:30 AM - 12:15 PM, Concourse, B13

ABSTRACT

Stroke is a major health burden in the United States, with approximately 800,000 Americans suffering a stroke annually. Because over one-third of strokes result in language impairment known as aphasia, evidence-based aphasia assessments are vital. Over 300,000 speakers of Greek reside in the United States, indicating a high likelihood of encountering stroke patients with aphasia for whom a Greek assessment would be essential. This project addresses the lack of any practical Greek-language aphasia assessment that is readily available to U.S.-based speech-language pathologists serving patients in medical settings. The Language Screening Test for aphasia (LAST) in English and French by Flamand-Roze et al. (2011) is a freely downloadable assessment that is endorsed by the American Stroke Association. Our team is adapting the LAST into Greek for cost-free dissemination, led by Julian Economou, an undergraduate student of Greek descent at Worcester State University's Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences Department. His WSU SLHS mentor is clinical researcher and speech-language pathologist Dr. Whitney Postman. Our collaborator is Anastasia Tsilia, a Greek doctoral candidate in Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has published on Greek morphosyntax and semantics. Our consultant is the author of the original LAST, Dr. Constance Flamand-Roze, a speech-language pathologist at Sud-Francilien Hospital in France. The Greek LAST is being carefully developed to ensure cultural and linguistic appropriateness while maintaining the original tool’s rigor and suitability for patients with aphasia. Each subtest-- naming, repetition, automatic speech, picture recognition, and verbal commands-- is being adapted to align with the linguistic properties of Greek.

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