Through your gift to the Arthur M. Blank Center for Stuttering Education and Research, you can help us advance understanding about the nature and effective treatment of stuttering, scale evidence-based programming to treat children, teenagers and adults worldwide, and create a pipeline of expert clinicians and researchers to make quality care accessible to all people.
Soleil's Story
At age three, Soleil struggled to get words out clearly. Concerned for her daughter, Soleil’s mother quickly sought help for her stutter. At the time, they lived in New York City and encountered the same frustrating and demoralizing situation numerous other families throughout the country already had — difficulty accessing effective and affordable clinical interventions.
Soleil is one of millions of people around the world who stutter. They all face a lifetime of trouble communicating, along with other obstacles like bullying, low self-esteem and difficulties in school and career. Early therapies prove extremely successful in mitigating these negative and lasting effects, but significant barriers to quality services exist. Not only is there an alarming lack of qualified therapists available, but many insurance companies simply do not cover treatment cost and force people to forego quality care.
Housed within the Moody College of Communication at The University of Texas at Austin, the Michael and Tami Lang Stuttering Institute is the nation’s first and only specialized center of its kind addressing these major issues. A global leader, the institute offers a full continuum of programs for clients, families, practitioners and students. It conducts groundbreaking research that guides progressive, evidence-based best practices in stuttering interventions, provides much-needed training to speech-language pathologists worldwide and offers the most advanced stuttering therapies to families like Soleil’s, and persons who stutter of all ages and culturally, linguistically diverse backgrounds.
After relocating to Austin, Texas, Soleil’s family discovered the Lang Stuttering Institute. With translational research informing her therapy and a focus on both the physical and social-emotional aspects of her stuttering, Soleil successfully graduated from the program a confident and articulate communicator.