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Hackensack Meridian JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Institute was awarded the 2021 SPEAK OUT!® & LOUD Crowd® Grant from the Parkinson Voice Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization solely dedicated to helping individuals with Parkinson’s improve their speech and swallowing. Grant recipients include hospitals, university speech therapy clinics, private practices, and nonprofit organizations. Each clinic receives therapy supplies and free training for their speech-language pathologists and graduate students. “This generous grant from Parkinson Voice Project will allow our team of specialists at JFK Johnson to provide highly specialized speech therapy to those in need in our surrounding communities,” said Dr. Sara Cuccurullo, M.D., chair, vice president and medical director, JFK Johnson Rehabilitation. “Up to 90% of people with Parkinson’s are at high risk of losing their ability to speak, and swallowing complications account for 70% of the mortality rate in this patient population,” said Samantha Elandary, founder and CEO, Parkinson Voice Project. “Our vision at Parkinson Voice Project is to make our highly effective speech therapy program accessible to people with Parkinson’s worldwide.” This grant program honors Daniel R. Boone, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, a world-renowned speech-language pathologist and voice expert who recognized in the late 1950s that individuals with Parkinson's could improve their communication by “speaking with intent." Parkinson Voice Project’s program combines individual and group therapy to convert speech from an automatic function to an intentional act.