WORLD VOICE DAY 2011
Page updated: 12th April 2011
What is World Voice Day?
World Voice Day is celebrated annually on 16th April. The idea began in Brazil and then spread to the USA and all around the world. The idea is to celebrate healthy voices and highlight the importance of voice at work and in society.
The BVA Contribution for 2011
This year the BVA has focussed on providing the general public with information about occupational voice disorders. We have designed a leaflet encouraging people to think about keeping their voice healthy in the work place and identifying some of the risk factors associated with professions recording a higher incidence of vocal problems among their employees. The leaflet offers some suggestions about what they and their employers can do to minimize these risks. Copies of this leaflet will be circulated to you shortly. Please feel free to copy and distribute them to your clients/patients. If you would like more printed copies please contact Jackie Ellis at: administrator@britishvoiceassociation.org.uk
You can download a PDF copy of 'Voice disorders and the workplace' here
News of other activities for World Voice Day 2011...
International WVD Survey
We have recently received information about an International initiative for World Voice Day which has been instigated by our Patron, Dr Ron Baken. Participating centres so far include the New York, Hong Kong, London, Tel Aviv and Sao Paulo, Brazil. The purpose is to investigate the general public's awareness of voice and how important voice is in their everyday lives.
The study needs volunteers to approach members of the public in places such as the High Street, Stations or in the supermarket, and ask them five simple questions. If you are planning to hold a World Voice Day stand in your hospital, this also might be a good place to carry out the survey. We do suggest you check for permission from the hospital/ supermarket/station if you decide to work in any of these areas. A link to the survey questions and a score sheet for their answers can be found below together with some guidelines for carrying out the survey.
Completed score sheets can then be sent to the BVA administrator at 330 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8EE, who will arrange for them to be collated. Once the results have been analysed, we hope the organisers will feed the findings back to us, where they will be available on our website. You are under no obligation to take part but we hope you will consider it.
World Voice Day Flyers
Copies of the World Voice Day flyer (A4 size) that was jointly commissioned by The BVA and Voice Care Network will also be sent to you at the same time as the leaflet for display in your clinic/hospital. Do feel free to ask for more copies from our Administrator (or copy them yourselves) and distribute them to local health centres/surgeries, schools, public libraries or anywhere you think is appropriate to bring World Voice Day to the attention of the general public.
What can you do to raise awareness of World Voice Day?
Please think about what you could do locally to celebrate World Voice Day. Look on the BVA website and you will see some reports about things others have done in 2009 and 2010. It does not matter if things are repeated. Maybe you could contact your local radio station or local paper to make them aware of World Voice Day and why voice is important. Some of you may be willing to give an interview or write a short piece about the importance of maintaining a healthy voice.
Voice Clinics and World Voice Day
It is always great to encourage GPs and the general public to know about voice clinics, what they can offer and how to refer patients to them. Please consider whether you could organize a voice clinic "open day" for GPs and the general public at your hospital. Alternatively, you could give a short presentation about the work of the voice clinic to your local GPs at one of their study days. Most GPs have regular monthly study days. Ask one of your local GPs who organizes these and see what you can arrange. In view of the new government plans to put GP’s in charge of the NHS budget, it is more important than ever that they know about the work of voice clinics and understand how important voice and communication are to their patients.
Possible Interview Topics.
If you decide to approach the media to publicize World Voice Day, below are some possible topics to give you ideas for interviews. The main message to get across is that voices are amazing; where would we be without them? They are the most important tool for communication we have and there are lots of things you can do to keep them healthy. Please also encourage people to visit the BVA and Voice Care network websites for further information.
- What do we mean by voice? (e.g. how it makes speech/song/emotional utterances audible for the listener to hear)
- You might briefly want to mention how the voice works
- Talk about how amazing voice is (e.g. it can fill a huge a concert hall yet the vocal folds are roughly the size of a postage stamp)
- Consider things you would find hard to do without your voice, (e.g. work, social life, personal relationships etc)
- Talk about ideas for keeping your voice healthy and building vocal skills (look on the BVA and Voice Care network websites below for ideas)
- Advice on how to recognize vocal problems and what to do if worried (e.g. any change in voice quality lasting longer than 2 weeks needs to be discussed with the GP/ENT surgeon
- Talk about what is involved in a voice clinic
- Talk about how voice therapy can help, what it involves
- Refer people to the BVA and Voice Care Network websites for further information and voice clinic lists
- If you have willing patients who benefited from help, you might want to ask them to come with you and tell their story.
World Voice Day 2011 News
We've created a separate news page to display information about all the 'World Voice Day' activities taking place both in the UK and around the world in 2011. World Voice Day 2011 News...
Useful Websites
- The American Academy of Otolaryngologists www.entnet.org/worldvoiceday
- Voice Care Network www.voicecare.org.uk
Thank you for supporting World Voice Day 2011
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