About LUNA
LUNA is a novel discourse treatment that considers the needs of its users from the outset of the project. LUNA focuses on people with aphasia telling personal stories.
Personal stories are important in everyday communication. For example, we use stories to share important experiences, things we have been doing, and things we’ve seen. LUNA will develop the Speech and Language Therapy evidence base on discourse therapies for people with aphasia.
We would love to hear from you – please share your thoughts by commenting on our blog, getting in touch by email, or getting in touch via Twitter.
LUNA Phases
LUNA has five phases:
- synthesising existing work on discourse;
- surveying Speech and Language Therapists;
- co-designing LUNA materials;
- training Speech and Language Therapists;
- testing LUNA with people with aphasia.
SLT involvement in LUNA
SLTs are integral to the LUNA project. We have involved UK SLTs in the following ways:
- Survey of current UK practice.
- Co-design of LUNA resources.
- LUNA training.
- Researchers on the project.
LUNA Team
LUNA is an exciting collaboration between speech and language therapy, clinical linguistics, and psychology. The LUNA research team is from the UK, the USA, and Australia. The LUNA advisory group is made up of consultants with aphasia and Speech and Language Therapists.
Significance
LUNA will benefit people with post-stroke aphasia by: improving their language function; improving discourse ability impacting on engagement in conversation; reducing the negative impact that aphasia has on their lives; and improving their mood and quality of life.
Community of Practice
In July 2019, the LUNA team trained 59 SLTs across 2 days in 6 discourse analyses at City, University of London. These analyses were selected following hours of discussion regarding practicality, robustness, and meaningfulness with our codesign team. Feedback from the training was positive: SLTs reported learning new skills they could use in practice. We expect some skills and methods to be easy to implement, and some to be hard. We invited everyone who attended the training day to join a LUNA Discourse Analysis Community of Practice (CoP). This is a password protected space, where clinicians who attended can share highs, lows, barriers, facilitators, questions and ideas as they implement their new skills and methods; and for the LUNA team to cascade interesting and relevant resources.
Stay updated
We will share updates as LUNA progresses. News and updates can be found
on our blog
on Twitter
Links
Keen to find out more? There’s lots we would love to share about storytelling; and about the theory and research behind LUNA.