Alumna helps people with Parkinson’s disease through speech therapy services fully funded by past patients and their families
The signs are subtle at first. A slight tremor in a finger. Handwriting getting smaller. The smell of pickles isn’t as strong as it used to be. Trouble sleeping.
As dopamine-producing neurons decrease in the brain, Parkinson’s disease can progress and impair movement. This can lead to speech and voice changes, including soft, slow, rapid or unclear speech and facial masking that affects emotional expression, according to the Parkinson’s Foundation.
Dr. Michael Fountain ’70 & ’72, retired Laurence C. Walker Distinguished Professor and former ĢƵ associate dean of forestry, was experiencing those changes when he sought help from ĢƵ’s Stanley Center for Speech and Language Disorders. Before he died in 2024, his encouragement inspired Brittany Scott ’17 & ’22 to pursue working with people with Parkinson’s after completing her Master of Science in speech-language pathology.
“Before him, I didn’t think I had the skills to work with adults as I had only ever worked with children,” Scott said. “He helped me envision a future I would not have believed in myself enough to see. And ĢƵ’s faculty and hands-on training got me where I am today.”
Today, Scott is the lead speech-language pathologist at Parkinson Voice Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in Richardson that provides no-charge speech therapy services to help people with Parkinson’s regain and retain their speech and swallowing. Parkinson Voice Project, founded by Samantha Elandary, recently celebrated its 20th anniversary.
Pinpointing her passion
While growing up in the small East Texas town of Diana, Scott said she knew nothing about speech therapy.
“I did not know anyone with Parkinson’s disease other than Michael J. Fox,” she said. “I initially wanted to be a teacher, but I was not passionate about it. One day, my mom mentioned I should become a speech therapist. As a 17-year-old who really didn’t know what I wanted, I said, ‘Sure!’”
Scott was initially drawn to ĢƵ while participating in junior high and high school band competitions at the university and becoming more familiar with campus while her older brother attended. She knew she wanted to be a Twirl-O-Jack, and she was a member on the line all four years while earning her Bachelor of Science in communication sciences and disorders.
“I was part of the group that performed at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade,” she said. “I absolutely loved my time as a TOJ, and I frequently return for events as an alumna.”
After starting college and taking the “Intro to Communication Sciences and Disorders” course, Scott said she was hooked.
“It was so interesting to learn how humans make sounds, understand how the parts of our brain control language, and see how speech therapy can help people in many different settings and at all ages,” she said. “While I was taking my intro courses, I had two relatives born with disabilities. It was impactful to learn specific things in class and then see them in real life with my relatives. All in all, my mom was right!”
About 15 years before Scott arrived at ĢƵ, Elandary was launching her career in Richardson. While treating her patients with Parkinson’s, she saw they responded well to speech therapy and vocal exercise. However, they struggled to maintain the improvements they made in therapy. If they stopped their home speech exercises, their speech would decline and their swallowing would become compromised. This could lead to feeding tubes and even life-threatening aspiration pneumonia.
Elandary knew people with Parkinson’s needed a lifetime of speech therapy and daily home practice to battle the disease progression of Parkinson’s, so she created a program to motivate her patients and help them “stay the course.”
In 2005, Elandary founded the nonprofit Texas Voice Project for Parkinson Disease. Five years later, her clinical team developed the SPEAK OUT!® Therapy Program based on the renowned speech-language pathologist Dr. Daniel R. Boone’s teachings of “speaking with INTENT.” In 2011, the organization changed its name to Parkinson Voice Project and, in 2012, began replicating its program to help people with Parkinson’s beyond Texas. In 2021, a major gift from a grateful family endowed the nonprofit’s 10,000-square-foot speech therapy clinic, which is where Scott works today.
Refining her skills
In 2018, ĢƵ was one of the first recipients of Parkinson Voice Project’s clinical education grant, which allows graduate clinics to treat people with Parkinson’s at no cost using the SPEAK OUT! Therapy Program.
Deena Petersen, who retired in 2025 from her role as clinic director of ĢƵ’s Stanley Center for Speech and Language Disorders, applied for the grant.
“I knew the Stanley Center was a strong candidate for this grant because the need for SPEAK OUT! Therapy in East Texas is so significant,” she said. “Sometimes referred to as the Parkinson’s Belt, East Texas has a notably high prevalence of Parkinson’s disease. Health professionals attribute this in part to increased exposure to environmental risk factors, including agricultural chemicals and other neurotoxins.”
In an April 2025 KLTV interview, Dr. George Plotkin, a neurologist in Tyler, discussed the research behind the East Texas portion of the Parkinson’s Belt, which also extends through the Rust Belt, or areas of the Midwest and Northeast where factories are old and closed. When listing what East Texans should know about Parkinson’s, Plotkin said, “You’re living in one of the hottest zones for Parkinson’s in the world.”
No matter where they live in Texas, patients at Parkinson Voice Project in Richardson never receive a bill for SPEAK OUT! Therapy, and the organization does not work with insurance. No patient has ever been denied services.
“Since 2008, we have been fully funded by grateful patients, their families and generous community donors,” Scott said.
SPEAK OUT! Therapy helps patients transform speech from an automatic action into a voluntary, intentional act.
“Speaking is an automatic function — meaning, we don’t have to put in conscious effort,” Scott said. “Parkinson’s makes automatic functions small and uncoordinated. So, when patients use their automatic voice it can be soft and gravely. When they activate their intentional system by speaking with effort and deliberation, their voice becomes stronger and clearer, helping build the muscles back up.”
In the 1950s, Boone first saw the benefits of speaking with INTENT while working with a neurologist at Highland View Hospital in Cleveland. When asked to count forward, people with Parkinson’s mumbled. When asked to count backward from 10, these patients continued to mumble, but when asked to count backward from 20, they spoke louder and more clearly because they had to concentrate more.
Because of ĢƵ’s grant, Scott was able to take the SPEAK OUT! Therapy student course at no cost during her graduate studies in 2020 and work directly with patients who had Parkinson’s disease.
“My career would not have been possible without the tenacity and ambition of Deena Petersen getting that grant for ĢƵ,” Scott said. “I had never worked with this population before, and I soon fell in love with how life-changing the treatment was for these patients.”
Scott relies on her passion and empathy to successfully connect with her patients.
“It brings me joy to help patients achieve their goals,” she said. “Making connections with my patients is very important to me. Relating to patients and earning their trust is powerful. If they trust that I have their best interests at heart, this journey through SPEAK OUT! Therapy becomes even more impactful.”
Her memories of working with Fountain also continue to guide her work.
“The exposure to this program at ĢƵ, combined with my former patient’s encouragement, has helped me reach where I am today,” Scott said. “Dr. Fountain has now passed, but our photo together is in my office, where it continues to encourage me daily.”
Planning for the growing need
Parkinson’s is the second-most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer’s disease. The number of people living with Parkinson’s disease in the U.S. is expected to rise to approximately 1.2 million by 2030, according to the Parkinson’s Foundation. Prevalence rates of the disease increased substantially in Texas from 2012 to 2022, especially among those ages 65 and older and Hispanics, according to a journal article published in the 2025 issue of Clinical Parkinsonism & Related Disorders.
“The need for ĢƵ’s communication sciences and disorders undergraduate program, speech-language pathology graduate program and Stanley Center for Speech and Language Disorders is only going to increase,” said Dr. Lydia Richardson ’02, ’04, ’21 and ’26 associate professor and coordinator of the SLP graduate program at the university.
The programs’ and clinic’s recent moves from the James I. Perkins College of Education to ĢƵ’s new College of Health Professions will ultimately lead to more resources not only for students in these programs but also for East Texans with Parkinson’s disease, Richardson said.
“The new college unites ĢƵ’s essential mental, physical and rehabilitative health programs so we can collaborate more effectively and care for East Texans as whole individuals, which is critical in a rural area,” she said. “This alignment also helps our students by expanding their pathways into high-demand health professions.”
The Stanley Center for Speech and Language Disorders continues to offer SPEAK OUT! Therapy at no cost for people in Nacogdoches and surrounding communities who have Parkinson’s disease. And, in retirement, Petersen continues to advocate for the Nacogdoches Parkinson’s Support Group.
“Like Brittany, I am constantly inspired by these patients,” she said. “They work hard to maintain their voice, mobility and independence, and ĢƵ’s programs help them do that while training future healthcare providers.” ★