Dr. Tillery will assist athletes in China

Kim Tillery, associate professor in the Speech Pathology and Audiology department at SUNY Fredonia, has been selected as one of about a dozen audiologists from the United States to go to China in late September to conduct hearing assessments on thousands of Special Olympic athletes.

Dr. Kim Tillery of SUNY Fredonia works at an immittance bridge, which measures middle ear status, in the Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology.

“It’s a tremendous honor to be associated with Special Olympics in first place,” Dr. Tillery explained, “let alone being able to travel to China and represent our institution and to be working with colleagues from all around the world and with athletes from around the world.”

Dr. Tillery, who chairs the Speech Pathology and Audiology department, will serve on behalf of Healthy Athletes, an umbrella organization formed in 1996 to help Special Olympics athletes improve their health and fitness with the overall goal to enhance sports experience and improve well-being. She and her U.S. colleagues will train another 17 to 25 audiologists from Asia and New Zealand in the protocol to serve such a large population with unique needs in an efficient and reliable manner.

These audiologists will comprise the Healthy Hearing contingent that will screen an estimated 2,000 athletes for middle and inner ear problems at the International Special Olympics Summer Games in Shanghai.

The two-week trip, beginning in late September, won’t be Dr. Tillery’s first experience with Special Olympics athletes. She and SUNY Fredonia clinical audiologist Dr. Marc Wilcox have taken 10 speech pathology graduate students to New York’s Special Olympics for the last seven years to provide Healthy Hearing assessments. Training received by the students is applied to their educational and clinical requirements at SUNY Fredonia.

This past May, Dr. Tillery was invited to train audiologists at the Special Olympics in Toronto. That most recent experience, Dr. Tillery believes, led to the invitation to the Special Olympics in China. Though she’s never been to China, Dr. Tillery spent four of her teen years living in Japan.

It’s unlikely that Healthy Athletes could find a more passionate spokesperson than Dr. Tillery, whose embrace of the organization’s mission to improve the health of these athletes can only be matched by the drive that these athletes display to succeed at these games.

“The point is that a healthy athlete is a better athlete, and where else can you provide all of these screenings to athletes who are at risk of having hearing, vision and dental problems,” she explained. “All disciplines are represented under the Healthy Athlete program at every Special Olympics event held worldwide.”

Dr. Tillery, who teaches undergraduate courses in audiology and a graduate-level course in auditory processing disorders, plans to share her experience with colleagues at SUNY Fredonia and across the state and “spread the word” about the Healthy Athlete program. She would also like to have SUNY Fredonia master’s level students serve at the International Special Olympics Games to be held in Utah in two years.