A Dysphagia Resource for Professionals and People with Difficult Swallowing

Hormel Health Labs Health Hero Award

Karen was the first recipient of the Hormel Health Labs Health Hero Award!

Read the full article: Health Hero Advances Dysphagia Research – Hormel Health Labs

National Dysphagia Awareness Month

June is National Dysphagia Awareness Month in the United States! Check out Karen’s posts on her Twitter and Facebook pages (@SwallowStudySLP). She posted over 70 times to raise awareness during the month of June. Follow hashtags: #NDAM, #DysphagiaAwareness and #Dysphagia for many informative posts & infographics.

Read more about dysphagia with this article on RightAtHome.net, written after interviewing Karen Sheffler: https://www.rightathome.net/blog/dysphagia-difficulty-swallowing-in-older-adults

Podcast with Fox Rehab (5/1/19)

FOXCAST SLP: IDDSI – International Dysphagia Diet Standardization Initiative with Karen Sheffler.

Dysphagia Research Society (DRS) annual conference May 2019

Karen attended the Dysphagia Research Society’s (DRS) annual conference March 6-9, 2019. She is on the DRS Website, Communications, and Public Relations Committee and assisted with fundraising and social media promotion for the event. This global conference drew people to San Diego, CA from 24 different countries.

Additionally, Karen had thousands of people following her 85+ live tweets, helping to connect the global dysphagia community of clinicians and researchers. Karen has also been promoting the International Dysphagia Diet Standardization Initiative (www.IDDSI.org) for years, and she is seen here at the IDDSI booth at the DRS conference with the IDDSI co-chair, Peter Lam. RD, CFE.

Karen attended the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics

Karen attended the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ (AND) Food and Nutrition Conference Expo (#FNCE17) for the first time. This was a great opportunity for interdisciplinary networking. Karen presented at the Hormel booth to raise awareness about the International Dysphagia Diet Standardization Initiative (IDDSI). Karen (middle) is here with Peter Lam, RD, CFE, Co-Chair of IDDSI (on left) and Tim R. Garry, RD, LD, Director of Marketing for Hormel Health Labs / Hormel Food Sales, LLC

National Foundation of Swallowing Disorders (NFOSD)

Karen is a member of and supports the National Foundation of Swallowing Disorders (NFOSD). Karen is here with Elizabeth Lipton, Executive Director of the NFOSD, at the Dysphagia Research Society Annual Meeting in Baltimore, MD in March, 2018.

A True IDDSI Champion

Karen is an IDDSI Champion and has been writing blogs and lecturing about IDDSI to raise awareness since 2014. Karen is pictured here again with Peter Lam, RD, CFE, Co-Chair of IDDSI (Note: Peter’s co-chair is Dr Julie Cichero, BA, BSpThy(Hons), PhD, who is a Speech-Language Pathologist in Australia).

Karen is displaying a colorful IDDSI informational poster. Go to www.IDDSI.org/Resources/ to download your own IDDSI posters, Powerpoints and more.

Hormel Health Labs Presentation

Karen educated food service professionals about swallowing/swallowing disorders and IDDSI for the Hormel Health Labs presentation at the Southeast region’s Navigator meeting in Tampa, Florida in March 2018. She made tubes that simulate the average diameter of the trachea (or airway) of infants, children, women and men to reinforce the reality of choking risks.

She had the audience performing the easy food and liquid testing methods created by the International Dysphagia Diet Standardisation Initiative (IDDSI), such as: The Fork Pressure Test and the IDDSI Flow Test. Go to http://iddsi.org/framework/ for more information.

Free IDDSI Webinars

Karen presented on BeckyDorner.com, providing the following 2 FREE webinars, brought to you by Hormel Health Labs. Learn more about IDDSI by listening to both of the webinars at: https://www.beckydorner.com/hormelhealthlabs/

Webinar 1: The International Dysphagia Diet Standardisation Initiative: The Who, Why, What & How

Webinar 2: Teamwork From Regulatory Requirements to Successful Implementation Webinar

One-Day Live Dysphagia Seminars

Karen provides live one-day seminars on dysphagia for Summit Professional Education, and she was in New Jersey, Minnesota, and New York in 2018. The course is now available online at Summit Professional Education. Course title: ‘What Every Therapist Needs to Know About Dysphagia: Swallowing Screening, Evaluation, & Treatment to Maximize Safety & Quality of Life.’

It is taught at the intermediate level and is a broad-sweep across the field, including: why to be concerned about dysphagia, why and how to advocate for your patients, screening, evaluation, treatment, palliative care/ethical considerations, IDDSI and more. It is designed for SLPs of all experience levels who need to make sure they have the latest evidence-based practices and resources. Karen and Summit encourage OTs and PTs to attend as well for excellent interdisciplinary care. Please notify Summit Education if you have a group interested in a live seminar near you.

Live Webinar for Martin Bros. Distributing Company

Karen gave a live webinar for Martin Bros. Distributing Company, Inc educating dietary managers and registered dietitians about the International Dysphagia Diet Standardisation Initiative (www.IDDSI.org). Interesting webinar poll results as of October 2018: 25% of participants were not at all familiar with IDDSI yet. 42% were a little familiar, 29% were somewhat familiar, and only 4% were very familiar. 87% of respondents are still using the old diet label of “Mechanical Soft,” and a variety of other non-standardized diet labels are still being used.

Learn more about the global wave to standardize diets for patient safety at www.IDDSI.org.

3D Printed Pharmaceuticals Summit

Karen presented at the first ever 3D Printed Pharmaceuticals Summit on November 8, 2018 in Livingston, NJ. She was invited to be on a panel titled: 3D Printing of Pharmaceuticals and Biologics to Address Unmet Medical Needs. The conference was sponsored by the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest (CMPI.org) and Aprecia – The 3DP Pharmaceutical Company (Aprecia.com).

Dysphagia is a significant unmet need in traditional drug manufacturing, as people struggle every day to safely swallow their medications. Please see Karen’s blog for more exciting information on how 3D printing will revolutionize what we think of as a finished drug product.

American Speech-Language & Hearing Association (ASHA) in Boston, MA

Karen spoke at the 2018 national convention of the American Speech-Language & Hearing Association (ASHA) in Boston, MA. Together with Theresa Richard, MA, CCC-SLP, BCS-S from SwallowYourPride podcast, she spoke about revolutionizing the old concept that the videofluoroscopic swallow study/VFSS (aka, modified barium swallow study) is the only gold standard for dysphagia evaluations.

When an SLP is thoroughly evaluating an individual’s difficulty with swallowing, it cannot be a dichotomy between just the traditional two exams of the VFSS versus the FEES/Fiberoptic Endoscopic Evaluation of Swallowing. You choose the exam that best fits your clinical questions and hypotheses. Your evaluation process may include one of these exams, both, none, and/or the myriad of other ways to evaluate the swallow with appropriate referrals to our other colleagues in the field of deglutition (i.e., gastroenterologists, otolaryngologists, etc). To reflect this thinking, Karen coined the new term of a “Platinum Standard of Personalized Medicine.”

This means that you are using a personalized medicine approach for you dysphagia evaluations. Your more precise evaluations will lead to targeting treatment to the individual’s needs. Read more on personalized medicine and precision medicine in Karen’s blog.