This blogpost was authored by Professor Sharynne McLeod. Prof. McLeod is a speech-language pathologist and professor of speech and language acquisition at Charles Sturt University, Australia. She visited the University of Bristol as a Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor April-May 2024 and collaborated with Professor Yvonne Wren in the Bristol Dental School on the project ‘Children born with cleft palate: Intelligibility and participation’.
As a Bristol Benjamin Meaker Visiting Distinguished Professor, Prof. McLeod collaborated with colleagues in the Bristol Dental School, the Faculty of Health Sciences, and the wider University of Bristol community to advocate for communication for all, acknowledging the untapped potential of those who are underrepresented in society’s conversations. Prof. McLeod was hosted by Prof. Yvonne Wren, who leads the Cleft Collective Cohort Study, a national longitudinal cohort study with over 11,000 participants from over 4000 families in the United Kingdom. The Cleft Collective uses the Intelligibility in Context Scale (ICS), an outcome measure developed by Prof. McLeod and team, that is also recommended in the International Consortium of Health Outcome Measures (ICHOM) Set of Patient-Centered Outcome Measures for Cleft Lip & Palate. During this visit, Prof McLeod worked with the Cleft Collective team to generate reference data at ages 3 and 5 years and found significant differences based on cleft type and whether a syndrome was present. Despite being available in over 70 languages, this is the first time the ICS has been studied longitudinally. In addition to her well-received lectures, Prof. McLeod undertook capacity building workshops and mentoring to support students and staff across the wider University of Bristol community.
You can read more about Prof. McLeod’s experiences on her blog: Speaking my languages.
