Alumna Restores Hope By: Rachel Forrester
To Children and Families with Cleft Birth Defects
A top choice for students today, ENMU’s Communicative
patients daily to help with feeding, swallowing and articulation.
Disorders Master’s Program offers low tuition, a hybrid of
They also provide long-term care and do about 10 outreach
online and on-campus classes, and 100 percent employment for
clinics per year for patients who live in rural areas.
graduates. Danielle St. Amand (MS 13) completed the program in 2013 and currently works at the University of New Mexico (UNM) Hospital in Albuquerque as a speech language pathologist
stress of intense medical care. In addition to improving speech
returned to campus this past November with UNM’s Cleft and Craniofacial Team to present their knowledge and techniques to current students in the CDIS program.
and quality of life, for her youngest patients Danielle’s main goal is to ensure that their cleft isn’t preventing them from maintaining adequate weight and nutrition.
“ENMU does a great job,” Danielle said. “They offer a craniofacial places tend to blend that topic into another major course.”
therapy and other interventions, many children face social and emotional challenges due to the differences in appearance and
focusing on patients with cleft palate and/or cleft lip. She
anomalies course which makes the program unique. Other
Although clefts can be treated with corrective surgeries, speech
Although ongoing treatment and support is available to families, there is still a need for greater social awareness of cleft lip and cleft palate so that no child or parent is ever ostracized
Cleft palate and cleft lip, both craniofacial
or isolated. “It’s not just a childhood pediatric
abnormalities, are birth defects that occur when a baby’s
disorder, it’s lifelong,” Danielle explained.
lip or mouth does not form properly during pregnancy. Danielle works to assess, diagnose, educate, and treat children and individuals up to 21 years of age with many types of cleft lips/palates and all related problems. She is passionate about her work and first realized her calling while treating one of her patients at ENMU’s Speech and Hearing Clinic who had a craniofacial disorder. “That patient really sparked my passion,” Danielle said. “It’s part of why I stayed in New Mexico and
“It’s very rewarding to be able to have a small impact on their overall confidence,” Danielle said. “Kids can definitely have huge self-esteem issues, so to be able to take away some of that feels good.”
didn’t return to New Hampshire.” Cleft lip and/or cleft palates occur in approximately one to two of every 1,000 births in New Mexico. Danielle and her team see
Danielle St. Amand holds a see-scape, a tool used to help patients who have a cleft lip and palate with articulation.
REGISTER ONLINE: ruidoso.enmu.edu
For more information, contact Rhonda Vincent at 575.937.1475 or rhonda.vincent@enmu.edu
Green & Silver | April 2019
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