Remote speech therapy for children with repaired cleft palate
Official title: Speech Intervention via Telepractice for Children with Repaired Cleft Palate : Randomized Controlled Trial and Assessment of Speech Production and Perception Skills
Funded at Texas Tech University Health Scis Center · NIH-11285381 · Data updated 2026-11-12
This project sees if online speech therapy helps young children who had cleft palate repairs improve how they make and hear speech sounds.
Quick facts
| Grant type | NIH-funded research |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | Texas Tech University Health Scis Center NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Lubbock, United States) |
| Project start | September 9, 2021 |
| Project end | January 31, 2028 |
| Funding year | 2026 |
| Award (this year) | $528,560 |
| NIH project number | 5UH3DE030869-05 |
| Project ID | NIH-11285381 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
Ideal candidates are children (roughly infancy to 11 years old) with a history of repaired cleft palate who show compensatory articulation errors and can participate in telepractice sessions.
✕Less likely to help
Children whose speech difficulties are unrelated to cleft palate anatomy, who are outside the eligible age range, or who lack reliable internet/device access may not benefit from this specific trial.
What this research studies
If your child had a cleft palate repair and still struggles with certain speech sounds, this trial compares telepractice (online) speech therapy to usual approaches. Children are randomly assigned to receive structured remote treatment from licensed speech-language pathologists, and their speech is measured before and after treatment. The study uses both listener judgments and acoustic (instrumental) analyses, and it also tests how speech perception and production are related. The team aims to use these results to know whether remote therapy can effectively treat the specific compensatory articulation errors common after cleft palate repair.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, this work could make effective speech therapy available remotely and help more children improve speech production and listening skills after cleft palate repair.
How similar studies have gone: Small telepractice studies for speech therapy have shown promise, but rigorous randomized trials specifically for children with repaired cleft palate have not been done.
Where this research is happening
-
Texas Tech University Health Scis Center
Lubbock, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Lee, Sue Ann Soyoung — Texas Tech University Health Scis Center
- Study coordinator: Lee, Sue Ann Soyoung
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About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page.