Patrick Doyle

The First Annual Clinical Aphasiology Conference (CAC) was convened in Albuquerque in 1971. It was attended by a small group of primarily practicing clinicians dedicated to meeting the human service needs of their clients, while recognizing the importance of contributing to the collective knowledge base of their discipline by providing empirical evidence supporting the links between their clinical interventions and outcomes. Thirteen years later Barlow, Hays, and Nelson (1984) would describe, in their now seminal publication The Scientist Practitioner, an integrated model of applied behavioral research, its strategies and methods, and the role of the practitioner in the acquisition of knowledge directed toward improving clinical procedures and outcomes. By this time, 13 Volumes of CAC publications had already been published and comprised the single largest source of applied clinical data addressing the nature of aphasia and its clinical management. These documents represented the product of the scientist-practitioner model in action prior to its formalization by Barlow et al., and provide a rich source of evidence supporting the efficacy of aphasia rehabilitation. Unfortunately, these and subsequent CAC publications remain unavailable to the larger clinical and scientific community due to their limited distribution. Much has changed in the ensuing years. Indeed, many of the healthcare delivery systems in which aphasia rehabilitation is now practiced in 2002 severely restrict the frequency and duration of clinical services. Increasingly, practitioners are required to be more accountable for their clinical outcomes, and to measure behavioral change in units that represent meaningful differences to consumers. Now more than ever, it is critical that the scientist-practitioner model be promoted in order to better serve individuals with aphasia, and to further advance the collective knowledge and evidence base of the discipline. Now more than ever, the available evidence needs to be disseminated as broadly as possible. These goals are in keeping with the mission of CAC as envisioned by its founding members and remain the focused commitment of its many participants, steering committee and publication board. In keeping with these goals, the papers that appear in this special edition of Aphasiology were selected based upon their theoretical importance, clinical relevance, and scientific merit, from among the many platform and poster presentations comprising the 31st Annual Clinical Aphasiology Conference held in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2001. Each paper was peer-reviewed by the Editorial Consultants and Associate Editors acknowledged herein consistent with the standards of Aphasiology and the rigours of merit review that represent this indexed, archival journal that is accessible to clinicians and scientists all over the world.

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