Assistant Professor Taeok Park
Taeok Park, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD) at Illinois State University, initiated a study of swallowing disorders in infants and children using X-ray swallowing examination.
There is limited research on the physiology and pathophysiology of swallowing disorders in the pediatric population. Park has developed this project to investigate the temporal characteristics of swallowing disorders in infants and children. The goal of this project is to develop the foundational knowledge of the physiology and pathophysiology of pediatric swallowing. This project is supported by the Summer Faculty Fellowship Grant from the College of Arts and Sciences at Illinois State University.
Park has collaborated with the researchers at Seoul National University Hospital in South Korea and at Ohio University. As a preliminary finding, she and her collaborators published a paper titled “The Temporal Characteristics of Swallowing in Infants and Young Children With Dysphagia: Preliminary Videofluoroscopic Study” in the Journal of Speech-Language and Hearing Disorders.
Park’s investigation will be a good starting point to understanding swallowing disorders in the pediatric population. Her plan is to have more clinical and physiological data for premature and full-term infants and children with pediatric dysphagia of various etiologies. Park hopes that the findings from her research will contribute to helping clinicians develop evidence-based diagnosis and treatment programs for the pediatric population.
