World Voice Day is a worldwide annual event devoted to the celebration of the phenomenon of voice. World Voice Day has been celebrated on April 16th every year since 1998. The aim is to demonstrate the enormous importance of the voice in our daily lives, as a tool of communication, and as an application of a large number of sciences, such as physics, psychology, phonetics, art, and biology.
Since 2015, McGill has celebrated World Voice Day with our professor, Dr. Nicole Li-Jessen, as the WVD coordinator for Canada. In collaboration with students, staffs and professors from a range of interdisciplinary fields, three events were held at McGill: World Voice Day Screening, Workshop and Seminar.
Theme
The theme of World Voice Day 2018 was laryngopharyngeal reflux. Free voice screenings, seminar presentations and a panel discussion with experts on vocal health and professional voice were provided to over 100 members of McGill and the Montreal public.
Students from the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, supervised by faculty advisors Dr. Nicole Li-Jessen and Dr. Isabelle Cossette developed a program of events aimed to increase public awareness of acid reflux. At the World Voice Day seminar, a knowledgeable panel of experts working in the fields of Laryngology (Dr. Karen Kost), Speech Language Pathology (Maia Masuda, SLP), and vocal pedagogy (John Mac Master) discussed the impact of reflux on professional voice users, and current standards its diagnosis and management. Details of the program can be downloaded here.
