Smile Train has always been committed to finding new paths and using technology to serve more patients and communities around the country through its Interactive Telehealth Program and Speech Camp. The Public Relations Society of the Philippines (PRSP) and the Philippine Chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators honored the programs with awards from colleagues in the communications industry. The program’s awards recognized the volunteers’, healthcare organizations’, and corporate partners’ commitment and devotion to rallying support for cleft patients so that they could continue to receive quality cleft treatment even during the disease outbreak.
Smile Train’s Speech Telehealth Program in the Philippines has supported more than 100 patients, providing them with more than 700 cleft care-related sessions, including speech therapy, nutritional support, breastfeeding guidance for mothers of babies with clefts, pre-surgical consultations, and psychosocial care. Results which made it possible for the programs to be conferred with the Silver Anvil Award at PRSP’s 56th Anvil Awards and a Merit Award at IABC’s 18th Philippines Quill Awards.
Launched in April 2020, two weeks into the lockdown, the Virtual Telehealth program is manned by volunteer speech language pathologists. Maximizing technology and social media, the Virtual Telehealth Program made use of Facebook Live, chat applications such as Viber and Messenger, and online discussions to ensure that speech therapy classes continued virtually. More than that, the Telehealth Program managed to reach cleft patients who live in rural or isolated communities and made its services more readily available or convenient for people with limited mobility, time, or transportation options.
Every kid, according to Smile Train, is deserving of the chance to live a normal life. Its willingness to provide speech therapy sessions online during such trying times demonstrates the foundation’s flexibility and dedication to delivering consistent comprehensive cleft treatment to its beneficiaries’ ever-changing needs. The program not only showed Smile Train’s ability to adapt rapidly, but it also helped to illustrate the numerous disparities that remain when it comes to the assistance that cleft lip and palate patients need.
To learn more about how Smile Train’s sustainable approach means donations have both an immediate and long-term impact, please visit smiletrain.ph. For more information about Smile Train’s work in the Philippines, please contact [email protected].
No Comments