Episode #114: Creating Equitable Aphasia Services with Dr. Teresa Gray

Aphasia Access Conversations

Interviewer info

Lyssa Rome is a speech-language pathologist in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is on staff at the Aphasia Center of California, where she facilitates groups for people with aphasia and their care partners. She owns an LPAA-focused private practice and specializes in working with people with aphasia, dysarthria, and other neurogenic conditions. She has worked in acute hospital, skilled nursing, and continuum of care settings. Prior to becoming an SLP, Lyssa was a public radio journalist, editor, and podcast producer.

In this episode, Lyssa Rome interviews Teresa Gray about creating equitable services for people with aphasia who are bilingual, non-English speaking, and historically marginalized groups.

Guest info

Dr. Teresa Gray is an Associate Professor in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at San Francisco State University, where she directors the Gray Matter Lab. Teresa’s research aims to improve aphasia health care outcomes for historically marginalized populations. Her research interests include bilingual aphasia, the mechanisms of language control in aphasia, and the role of language rehabilitation and its short-term and long-term effects on functional communication. Her team is working to develop evidence-based treatment methods for non-English speaking persons with aphasia, as well as bilingual persons with aphasia. In addition, the Gray Matter Lab hosts identity-based conversation clubs. The goal of these groups is to increase quality of life for the participants, and the lab is starting to examine why these groups are so meaningful to the participants.

Listener Take-aways

In today’s episode you will:

• Understand why careful listening is important when working with bilingual and non-English-speaking people with aphasia and their families.
• Describe how speech-language pathologists can tailor their treatment to meet the needs of bilingual people with aphasia.
• Learn about identity-based aphasia groups.

Edited transcript

Lyssa Rome

Welcome to the Aphasia Access Aphasia Conversations Podcast. I'm Lyssa Rome. I'm a speech language pathologist on staff at the Aphasia Center of California, and I see clients with aphasia and other neurogenic communication conditions in my LPAA-focused private practice. I'm also a member of the Aphasia Access Podcast Working Group.

Aphasia Access strives to provide members with information, inspiration, and ideas that support their aphasia care through a variety of educational materials and resources. I'm today's host for an episode that will feature Dr. Teresa Gray, who was selected as a 2023 Tavistock trust for aphasia Distinguished Scholar, USA and Canada. In this episode, we'll be discussing Dr. Gray's research on aphasia treatment for bilingual and non-English speakers with aphasia, as well as identity-based aphasia conversation groups.

Dr. Teresa Gray is an associate professor in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at San Francisco State University, where she directs the Gray Matter Lab. Teresa's research aims to improve aphasia health care outcomes for historically marginalized populations. Her research interests include bilingual aphasia, the mechanisms of language control and aphasia, and the role of language rehabilitation and its short-term and long-term effects on functional communication. Her team is working to develop evidence-based treatment methods for non-English-speaking persons with aphasia, as well as bilingual persons with aphasia. In addition, the Gray Matter lab hosts identity-based conversation clubs. The goal of these groups is to increase quality of life for the participants. The lab is starting to examine why these groups are so meaningful to the participants. Theresa Gray, welcome to the Aphasia Access Conversations Podcast. I'm really glad to be talking with you.

Teresa Gray

Thanks so much, Lyssa. It's great to be here today.

Lyssa Rome

So I wanted to start by asking you what led you to study bilingualism and aphasia?

Teresa Gray

Sure, that's a great question. So, you know, really it was about curiosity. And so when, when I finished my master's in speech language pathology, I was working in Los Angeles at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center. And I was working alongside a phenomenal group of speech language pathologists and a rehabilitation team, and it was just a wonderful experience. And a lot of our patients were bilingual. Some people were monolingual, non-English speakers. And it was just a situation where I was learning more and more about how to treat this population that may not speak English, even though a lot of our aphasia materials are based on English speakers. And in addition to that, I was curious to know more how does language present after stroke? If someone is a simultaneous bilingual versus a sequential bilingual, does that affect life after stroke? What about proficiency? What about language dominance? What about age of acquisition, all of these issues that go into language presentation—I was very curious about, and there wasn't a lot of research out there. And so, of course, as SLPs, we read the literature, and we really want to know, what is best practice.

So when I decided to go back for my PhD, I decided I wanted to go study with Swathi Kiran, who is a leader in the field working with bilingual adults with aphasia. And so I had that opportunity. And I moved from Los Angeles to Boston to go study with Swathi. That's when I really dove into learning more about cognitive control and what that looks like as far as like language control, and how that interacts with cognitive control and how that's represented in the brain, and what that means for our patients.

Lyssa Rome

And since then, I know you've moved into treatment. Can you say a little bit more about that?

Teresa Gray

Yeah, absolutely. So after it, yeah. So after Boston, I accepted a faculty position at San Francisco State University. And I continued with the cognitive control work. But that's when I realized, yeah, that's fascinating work. Because it's really better. It's getting to know it's learning more about the brain. And I think that's so important. It's so fascinating.

But I think what's also important with our patients is how does the rubber hit the road? How are these people, our patients and their families and caregivers, and the stakeholders, how are they affected by the aphasia? And what does that look like? And so that's when I started, I expanded my research agenda and the program, and I teamed up with Chaleece Sandberg. She was already working on ABSANT, which is abstract semantic associative network training. And that's a treatment that if you train concrete words, they get better. But if you train abstract words, they get better, they improve, but we also see generalization to the untrained concrete words.

So when she and I started talking about it, and you know, I bring the bilingual piece. And so we really wanted to develop a bilingual version of ABSANT. And the idea here is that when you treat the dominant language, it improves. But if you treat the non-dominant language, it improves, but you also see cross-language generalization to the untrained dominant language. And as we progressed through these this work, we really we started to realize that it's not just spreading activation that supports the cross-language generalization. There's this level of cognitive control.

So to achieve the cross language generalization, we're seeing that not only do you treat the non-dominant language, but patients also need to have intact cognitive control mechanisms at play. So the direction we're moving in is that if we have patients that come to the lab for bilingual ABSANT, we also make sure that we administer some of the nonverbal cognitive control tasks to get a sense of how they're processing that information, because that informs how we interpret the ABSANT performance.

Lyssa Rome

It sounds like really interesting and important work. And we we've interviewed Chaleece Sandberg on this podcast. I'll put that link in the show notes. Can you can you say more about bilingual ABSANT and what you've learned?

Teresa Gray

Yeah, sure. So what we've learned, like one aspect that we've come across is that just like, one size doesn't fit all is the same with therapy. And it wasn't before too long that we realized that this bilingual therapy isn't a great fit for all patients. And I'll tell you what I mean, like most bilingual therapies, we're treating patients within monolingual contexts. So you'll treat English and then you treat Spanish.

In my lab, one of our goals is we're really trying to be as inclusive as we can. And if a patient comes to us and speaks a language combination, let's say Russian and English, we think about do we have resources? I mean, do I have students available to administer the intervention? Can we norm the stimuli and I've been fortunate enough to have many bilingual students who speak a variety of language combinations. And being in California, most of my students speak English and Spanish, but I've also had Polish-English combinations Chinese-English, Russian-English and a few others.

What I'm getting to is that a few years back we had a Tagalog-English English speaking patient, and a very motivated student who wanted to administer bilingual ABSANT. And what we found was that during the English phase, it went as usual but during the Tagalog phase, both patient and clinician reported that it was just, you know, quite frankly, it was weird not to code switch, and it felt constrained and unnatural. And so really the logical next step was to think about, well, really to question, why are we delivering a bilingual therapy in a monolingual context, we shouldn't be doing something where it's more of a code switching based therapy that really fosters the communication that the patient needs.

So this was a few years ago, and at the time, we didn't have the bandwidth or resources to address this. And unfortunately, that's how research functions—it’s really about capacity and resources. But now here we are, and last summer in 2023, we did start norming our Tagalog data set, and to really move forward with this, a truly code switching, or as some folks are calling it translanguaging, like this new, another phase. So we can actually look at what is most beneficial for these patients who are code switching in their natural environments. And so thus far, we have run one patient who has who has gone through this translanguaging experience. And we're quite fortunate to have two more patients on deck. And so we're pretty excited about this.

Lyssa Rome

Yeah, that's really exciting. And I think on this podcast, we talk a lot about life participation, the life participation approach is about making therapy as real to life as possible, and I think what you're describing is targeting therapy to the way that people actually use language. Whether you call it code switching, or translanguaging, the way we deliver therapy to people who are bilingual or multilingual should mirror in some way, their experience of speaking more than one language. Am I getting that right?

Teresa Gray

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it also touches on you know, I think it's important that we listen to our patients, other clinicians, family members, and if you're working with students, listen to your students. For quite some time, my students have been asking about non-English interventions for aphasia. And we all know that the majority of aphasia interventions are based on English speakers. But the thing is, if we're simply adapting English aphasia interventions for non-English languages, does that create treatment resources that are culturally and linguistically appropriate?

Now, regarding the cultural piece, oftentimes you can choose stimuli to be culturally appropriate. But what about the linguistic aspects when you take a treatment and simply adapt it to another language? And I think it's important that we stop and think about this issue. And I'm in a situation where my students are thinking about social justice issues within the field of speech pathology, and we're thinking about patient access to services, and what those services are, and are they equitable across diverse linguistic populations?

Lyssa Rome

It seems like you're talking about really listening to and understanding and asking the right questions of all of the stakeholders—the students, the clinicians, and, of course, the people with aphasia. And, as we were preparing for this podcast, you talked with me a little bit, and I was really interested in what you had to say about, the importance of understanding client's language history and how they use language. And you had some ideas for how to elicit more information about that. Would you mind sharing that for a moment?

Teresa Gray

Well, one thing I've learned to ask, and I learned this from Maria Muñoz, who's down in Los Angeles. One thing I think it's really important is how we ask questions to our patients and their families. And so rather than asking someone if they're bilingual, which can be a loaded question, and people interpret it in different ways, because some folks think, well, to be bilingual, you need to be highly proficient in both languages. But really, that's not the case, right? Like, we want to know if people have exposure or if they use a language other than English. And so rather than asking you, if someone's bilingual, you can say, “Do you speak another language other than English?” Or “Do you understand another language?” And then people really start to open up.

Another important way to ask questions is, you know, who are you directing your question to? Are you asking the person with aphasia about their needs and what they want to do, versus the families? Sometimes families will say, “Our 24/7, caregiver is speaking Tagalog.” Let's say you're Spanish, so they really need to speak Spanish, but maybe the patient wants to get back to their, you know, a club or something, you know, some social group that they're a part of, and they want to practice a different language.

So again, you know, the language history, the way we ask questions, I think it's quite important when we're gathering information so that we can develop, you know, these rehabilitation programs for patients.

One way that we're addressing equitable services in my lab is that we've thought with my students and I we've thought about going back to the original ABSANT. So original ABSANT was developed for English monolinguals. And we decided to push ahead with a Spanish monolingual version. And this is quite important in the United States. This population, Spanish speakers, are growing, especially in certain areas, of course, in California. We really wanted to see we're assuming that ABSANT can be adapted to various languages. And theoretically, it should make sense. But I think it's important that we have the data that shows it. And so we've in this past year, we've started collecting data to actually show that yes, it is effective, because I think as conscientious clinicians, and in our profession, we talk about best practice. It's important that we show it. And so, moving forward, this is what we're doing and we're quite thrilled that we have the resources and the opportunity to move forward with this type of a project.

Lyssa Rome

It sounds like you're describing how equitable services starts with research that's more inclusive and is itself more equitable.

Teresa Gray

Absolutely. And I think it also it reminds me of how do we capture improvement? How do you measure success? Because right now, when we're doing research, or right now, when we're doing research, and also clinicians out there in the field, we talk about data collection, right? How are you measuring improvement? And for us in the lab, we're looking at effect sizes, but sometimes these effects sizes aren't significant. However, the patient reports that they feel more comfortable, and they're more confident at family gatherings, or out in the community, and that maybe they won't ask for help at the grocery store, but if they need to, they're not scared. And I think that is so I mean, that's invaluable. But how do you measure that? And how do we incorporate that into our data collection? And how we report improvement to the funding sources? Right? Because all of us I, you know, you can't get very far when without talking about insurance dollars and how we measure improvement to get more services for our patients.

Lyssa Rome

I think that that's, that's absolutely true. And I think we have to measure what's important to the person that we're that we're working with. I, I also wanted to talk with you about the identity-based conversation clubs that you have been working on at San Francisco State. Can you say a little bit more about those?

Dr. Teresa Gray

Yeah, sure. So we do have a few different groups, conversation groups, through my lab. And one group, it started out as just a service to the community. And so we started an English-speaking group. And at first a few years back, we were in person, but we transitioned to Zoom once COVID hit, I was very impressed with my team, because here in California, when things shut down in mid-March, within three weeks, the group was online.

Around that time, maybe a few years ago, we started talking about a Spanish-speaking group, we do have many bilingual patients who are Spanish-English bilinguals, a few of these folks are more comfortable speaking in English. That's their emotional language, and it's their human right to use that language to communicate. So my lab put together a team to start hosting a Spanish-speaking group. And what we've seen is that there's just a different dynamic, when you're speaking in the language that you're most comfortable using. Jokes are different. Chit-chat is different. And we found that patients report a great appreciation for the Spanish-speaking group. In addition to the Spanish conversation group, we also have a Black conversation group that's facilitated by Black student clinicians. This group was started back in January of 2022.

Lyssa Rome

And we spoke with some of the members of that group on this podcast and I'll again, I'll put the link to that in our show notes. And they were the people who participate in that group. Some of the members of that group had a lot of really positive things to say about how meaningful is had been to them to be amongst other Black people who share their experience. So maybe you can say a little bit more about that group?

Teresa Gray

Yes. So this group, it was started based on public interest. So one day in 2021, I received a phone call from a woman whose father had suffered a stroke. And she said to me, my dad is Black. He frequently attends aphasia groups. But the majority of people are white, where's the diversity? She was essentially asking, Where's the diversity? We know Black people are having strokes. But where are they? And what resources are there for people of color who have strokes? And of course these are important points that she's raising. And, in fact, leading up to this woman's call, my students and I were, we had been talking about starting this type of a group, but I wasn't sure if there was interest.

But that being said, we know when we look at health disparities, and we look at the data, we know that Black people have as much as a fourfold higher incidence of stroke than their white counterparts. But Black people are less likely to receive rehabilitation services. And that's just not right.

I have, you know, in this group, like you were saying, lists of people are so appreciative, and they're so interested, and they just really value this group. And I've had some of these patients who have said to me, Look, it was the summer of Black Lives Matter, people were getting murdered in the streets, people were rioting, and there was this national discourse going on about it. And they wanted to talk about it. But their aphasia conversation groups, were talking about the weather, or sports or the things that just seemed inconsequential at that time in their lives.

And I think this just gets back to the importance when we think about identity groups—what they are for these people with aphasia, and how do we facilitate and coordinate them? And especially, you know, when the majority of SLPs are white and monolingual? How do we step into this arena? And how do we support and how do we, how do we move forward with these, you know, with these groups that are so valuable and meaningful for people with aphasia? Yeah.

Lyssa Rome

I mean, I think it's incredibly important work. What have you learned about some of the best practices?

Teresa Gray

Sure, yeah. So I think it's all about, you know, being open and listening, but also learning how are you an ally? How do you ask questions? How do you make yourself vulnerable? Because if you're not sure about something, you want to ask. And, you know, sometimes with these groups, we've all left groups or situations where we reflect upon like, “Oh, I said, I said something—was that appropriate? I don't know.” But again, it's making ourselves vulnerable, and asking you to going back to the group next week and say, “Hey, I heard this, or I said, this, was that appropriate?” I think it's just being comfortable with this kind of discourse. To get there, it just takes practice, which just is, you know, going through the motions and doing the work and going through it and experiencing it.

Lyssa Rome

It seems like that's something that you've really prioritized within your lab and with your students and in your work.

Teresa Gray

Yeah, and you know, and we make a point to talk about it, we talk about what it looks like, how it feels, and sometimes those are hard conversations to have. There's literature out there. There's different resources to lean on. But it's definitely I mean, we're all learning as we going as well as we're going and I think it's about having just being reflective, which which can be challenging. But I think that I think as we come through to the other side, we're growing and it's this bi-directional growth, whether it's me and my students, us and the patients, the caregivers, just having these honest conversations because I think our goals are the same, right? Our priorities are to improve quality of life. And and that's essentially what we're doing.

Lyssa Rome

Coming back to bilingualism, I'm wondering if you have any additional thoughts or advice about use of interpreters, or thoughts for bilingual clinicians? How can they best work with and support people with aphasia? Who are also bilingual? Or who are non-English speaking?

Teresa Gray

That's a great question Lyssa, because many of us, many of SLPs are not bilingual. And quite frankly, even if you are bilingual, you may not speak the language of that population where you are working.

So it's so important that we partner with our interpreters. And know knowing who they are at your site. And this is tricky, because when we talk about this, one recipe isn't for everyone, because all sites are different. The way interpreters are set up in one hospital differs from the next hospital. So you need to know your system and then figure it out. Because if you want to start a conversation group, and you don't speak that language, you're gonna have to team up with the interpreter. And, and I think my advice now is, you know, it's not just about asking the interpreter about that culture or language, it's about doing your homework.

So for instance, if you have Spanish-speaking groups, it's important to know what countries your patients come from. And this is valuable because holidays vary across countries, and even within countries holidays and traditions will vary. So you know, when these and these variations can feed into your group discussions. So for instance, around the holidays, people can share what they do with their families, what foods do they eat, how do they celebrate? Last year, we had a Spanish-speaking group, and it was around the Fourth of July. And so rather than talking about the US Independence Day, each participant shared what their country's independence day looked like, and growing up what their traditions were. And people really enjoyed that type of activities.

As clinicians, learning about cultures, is so important. I know SLPs, you know, your time is so valuable, right? Like, our caseloads are high, but we can learn bits of information, talk to interpreters, explore topics, and then have activities. And if we go into it with open, you know, just creating a safe space where we're all learning, I think it creates this environment where people feel welcome, and they're comfortable. It's a positive environment when you have an SLP, who may not speak the language, but you have an interpreter who does. And then the participants, of course, they speak that language as well.

Lyssa Rome

It reminds me of what you were saying earlier about the importance of careful listening to the people that we're working with, including interpreters, right, but also particularly the people with aphasia, who we’re serving. Are there any other best practices that you want to share for SLPs who are working with historically marginalized populations of people with aphasia?

Teresa Gray

Well, I think at the end of the day, it's important that when we go into these environments, thinking about what materials are we using? How are people responding? And creating a space that if we have open eyes, we're open to suggestions. It creates an environment where people are comfortable to share, and, and then even when people give feedback, we can also improve our practice.

Lyssa Rome

I think that that's at the heart of what we aim to do as, as people who believe in the life participation approach. So thank you for that. I'm wondering as you look ahead, what's on the horizon for you in terms of your research in terms of your work in your lab? Can you tell us a little bit about, about what you're working on now, or what you're looking forward to working on?

Teresa Gray

Well, one thing on the horizon that we're quite excited about is with our Black conversation club, it has had such a great reception, and the participants are so thrilled to be there, that we really want to dive deeper, and take a look at what makes this group so special. And so we're ramping up now, hopefully we'll be starting soon. I'm partnering with Jamie Azios, who's in Louisiana, and her expertise is in conversation analysis. And so we're teaming up to start looking at the Black conversation club, to look at the discourse and try to figure out well, what are the themes? What is the secret sauce? What is the special sauce that makes this group so powerful?

Because I think, you know, when when we have the when you know, when you have data that shows that, and we can write about it and share it with our colleagues, I'm hoping this will inspire and give more of a foundation platform for our colleagues to start groups like this. Because if you have a research paper out there, it's something to hold on to. And it's something to really say like, look, this is effective. And it's worth it's, you know, it's so meaningful and valuable that we should be starting groups like this and other places as well.

Lyssa Rome

Absolutely. I agree. And I really look forward to that research. I think it's so important. So thank you for doing that work. Dr. Teresa Gray Thank you so much for your work, and for coming on the podcast to talk to us about it. I really appreciate it. It's been great talking with you.

Teresa Gray

Great, thanks so much.

Lyssa Rome

And thanks also to our listeners. For the references and resources mentioned in today's show, please see our show notes. They're available on our website, www.aphasiaaccess.org. There, you can also become a member of our organization, browse our growing library of materials and find out about the Aphasia Access Academy. If you have an idea for a future podcast episode, email us at [e-mail] Thanks again for your ongoing support of Aphasia Access. For Aphasia Access Conversations, I’m Lyssa Rome.

Links

Gray Matter Lab at San Francisco State University

Jamie Azios — Aphasia Access Conversations Podcast episode (Second episode)

NAA Black Americans with Aphasia Conversation Group — Aphasia Access Conversations Podcast episode

Chaleece Sandberg — Aphasia Access Conversations Podcast episode

Article: Beveridge, M. E., & Bak, T. H. (2011). The languages of aphasia research: Bias and diversity. Aphasiology, 25(12), 1451-1468.

Article: Gray, T., Palevich, J., & Sandberg, C. (2023). Bilingual Abstract Semantic Associative Network Training (BAbSANT): A Russian–English case study. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1-17.

Open access: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bilingualism-language-and-cognition/article/bilingual-abstract-semantic-associative-network-training-babsant-a-russianenglish-case-study/9B7FD1EDBDAB6FD042CD4714E1548005

Article: Sandberg, C. W., Zacharewicz, M., & Gray, T. (2021). Bilingual Abstract Semantic Associative Network Training (BAbSANT): A Polish-English case study. Journal of Communication Disorders, 93, 106143.

Article: Gray, T., Doyle, K., & Rowell, A. (2022). Creating a Safe Space for Black Adults With Aphasia. Leader Live.

Open Access: https://leader.pubs.asha.org/do/10.1044/2022-0614-black-aphasia-group/full/