The University of Texas at San Antonio will host an International Conference on Occupational Voice. The meeting will be held Friday-Saturday, October 12-13, 2007. The conference will bring together public health officials, occupational voice users and their employers, therapists, scientists, speech-language pathologists, medical doctors and other specialists in a format of lectures, panel discussions and informal conversations. Conference proceedings will be disseminated through a live web cast of the conference and through a website which will feature text versions of abstracts, streaming videos of presentations, presentation slides, audio files and links to other related websites. All attendees will receive a CD version of the website. The conference will feature key addresses by the following international speakers: Ingo R. Titze, Ph.D.; Nelson Roy, Ph.D., CCC-SLP; Robert Hillman, Ph.D.; Anne-Maria Laukkanen, Ph.D.; Philippe de Jonckere, M.D., Ph.D, and Maria S""""""""dersten, Ph.D. Each key speaker will also chair a session of the meeting. 18 other podium presentations will be given by investigators selected through a submission of abstracts. Topics advertised in the call for papers include: (1) the teaching voice user; (2) the performing voice user; (3) the persuasive voice user; (4) the service voice user; (5) the emergency voice user. In addition to reporting ongoing research on the voice use of these occupational groups, papers are being sought on: (1) the impact of vocal environmental hazards in the workplace and their mitigation; (2) habilitative interventions; (3) technological interventions. The conference organizers are open to the submission of outstanding applications on occupational voice which may not exactly fit the topics described above, but which merit presentation at an international meeting. Many occupations require employees to communicate vocally for a significant amount of time, at high amplitudes, in emotional situations and/or in challenging environmental settings, putting workers at potential risk for voice disorders. The costs of occupational voice problems to the economy have been estimated at several billion dollars annually. Given the large number of persons employed in at-risk occupations and the economic costs of workforce voice problems, a scientific meeting is needed to gather all those who employ, study, care for or assist voice professionals in the workforce. ? ? ?
