{"id":25976,"date":"2023-11-15T10:46:09","date_gmt":"2023-11-15T15:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/?p=25976"},"modified":"2023-11-20T14:10:07","modified_gmt":"2023-11-20T19:10:07","slug":"kidd-gilchrist-uses-personal-experience-to-help-those-who-deal-with-stuttering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/2023\/11\/kidd-gilchrist-uses-personal-experience-to-help-those-who-deal-with-stuttering\/","title":{"rendered":"Kidd-Gilchrist uses personal experience to help those who deal with stuttering"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Michael Kidd-Gilchrist is best known as an NBA veteran, University of Kentucky men\u2019s basketball champion and No. 2 overall pick in the 2012 NBA draft by the Charlotte Bobcats.<\/p>\n

The NCAA champion, though, wants you to know something else \u2013 that he\u2019s a stutterer \u2013 and that facilities like the Marshall University Speech and Hearing Center are changing lives through speech therapy. Kidd-Gilchrist has embarked on a national stuttering awareness tour that brought him to the Speech and Hearing Center and Hoops Family Children\u2019s Hospital this week.<\/p>\n

The nine-year NBA veteran took tours of the Hoops hospital and the Speech and Hearing Center before taking time to present to faculty and graduate students from the Department of Communication Disorders. The message was simple \u2014 to underline the importance of what they do and talk with them how he can continue to help their cause in the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember a time when I didn\u2019t want anyone to know about my stutter. When I entered speech therapy at the University of Kentucky, I told my therapist that I didn\u2019t want anyone to know,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cToday, I see my stutter as a gift that I have embraced, and I want to help others who stutter and those who are getting into the field of speech-language pathology.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2021, Kidd-Gilchrist founded Change & Impact, Inc., a stuttering initiative with a mission to improve access to healthcare and expand services and resources for those who stutter. Since forming Change & Impact, he\u2019s visited more than 50 universities, hospitals, stuttering camps and support groups. He advocates at the federal and state level to raise awareness about the gaps in the healthcare system that exist for those who stutter. Many insurance companies won\u2019t pay for the speech therapy necessary to help those who stutter overcome their issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt like it was a slap in the face when I found out that it wasn\u2019t covered by insurance,\u201d Kidd-Gilchrist said. \u201cIt was free to me at UK, but when I found out that this life-altering service wasn\u2019t covered for most, I knew I had to do something.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Marshall University Speech and Hearing Center provides many important speech and hearing services for the Huntington community and West Virginia region, allowing them to meet the requirements for the Certificate of Clinical Competence, awarded by the American Speech-Language Hearing Association (ASHA). Speech therapy is offered for children and adults for many speech issues, including stuttering.<\/p>\n

Kidd-Gilchrist says he had no one to look up to as a child dealing with stuttering, and now he wants to use his stature to provide others with that role model figure.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was blessed with these opportunities, and I need to use them to pay it forward and help those that are dealing with stuttering,\u201d Kidd-Gilchrist said.<\/p>\n

Change & Impact was founded in 2021 with a mission to improve access to healthcare and expand services and resources for those who stutter.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s all we want \u2014 to be accepted and have someone that understands us,\u201d Kidd-Gilchrist said.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Kidd-Gilchrist is best known as an NBA veteran, University of Kentucky men\u2019s basketball champion and No. 2 overall pick in the 2012 NBA draft by the Charlotte Bobcats. The NCAA champion, though, wants you to know something else \u2013 that he\u2019s a stutterer \u2013 and that facilities like the Marshall University Speech and Hearing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":619,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cohp","category-news-releases"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/619"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25976"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25979,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25976\/revisions\/25979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}