News: TNAAP helps stop closure of UT Speech and Hearing Center in Knoxville

The University of Tennessee Speech and Hearing Center in Knoxville narrowly escaped being discontinued during the fall of 2008. As part of President (of UT) Peterson's original budget cutting plan, the Speech and Hearing department in the College of Arts and Sciences was to be discontinued.

Loss of the program would have left TennCare and uninsured children in the Knoxville area with no available speech and hearing services. Larry Silverstien, a local attorney (whose father actually helped found the Center) worked tirelessly with several local pediatricians, including Dr. Mark Gaylord and Dr. Greg Blackmon, who helped to publicize the issue and wrote letters to the university's Board of Trustees and President Peterson.

A solution was reached to move the school out of the College of Arts and Sciences in Knoxville and into the School of Allied Health Sciences which is centered on the Memphis Campus. Dr. Pat Wall, Chancellor of the Memphis campus, and also a pediatrician and TNAAP member, helped to engineer the switch. A firm business plan was developed to allow the change, without further increasing the Medical campus's own financial difficulties. The center in Knoxville thus remains open but is now administered out of Memphis.

Advocacy by Knoxville pediatricians and work by TNAAP members on both sides of the state contributed to saving a necessary resource for East Tennessee Children.