SHBII Vision
Our goal at Speech Hearing and Balance Institute Inc is to connect donors with individuals in need, provide direct hearing and speech services, train speech-language pathology professionals, and respond to community requests for support in underserved populations.
Dr. Christina Lawrence's Story
During her humble start in life, Dr. Christina Lawrence often traveled between her home in New Orleans, Louisiana to her mother’s hometown in Roatan, Honduras. She saw and experienced first hand how lack of access to affordable healthcare could severely alter the course of a person’s life. At a young age, she became a caretaker for her younger brother, who is deaf and lacked the early support needed to become an effective communicator. Dr. Lawrence saw how this lack of support and care became an obstacle to his leading a full life, leaving him unable to advocate for his needs and obtain the education or skills needed to support himself as he moved into adulthood.
Determined to be a part of the solution and to prevent other people from needless suffering due to hearing and speech challenges, Dr. Lawrence put herself through rigorous academic training, earning a Master of Science degree in Speech-Language Pathology soon followed by a Doctorate in Audiology. She is now a fellow at the American Academy of Audiology and the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
Dr. Lawrence began her philanthropic work in 2008 when she traveled with “Children of Mexico” to provide speech evaluations and therapy for special needs children living in orphanages. She also trained staff on treatments for swallowing disorders. From 2009 – 2012, Dr. Lawrence traveled to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras to provide mass hearing screenings for underserved populations in those countries. She set up a hearing aid donation program to provide no-cost hearing aids to people who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford those devices. She again trained staff on a variety of aural rehabilitation techniques to ensure long term success for those who received hearing aids.
Dr. Lawrence provides free hearing and speech screening events for children and adults in the areas surrounding Mancos, Colorado, where she lives with her husband and two kids. She practices audiology at her clinic, Lawrence Speech and Hearing Services, treating Veterans who don’t have access to a VA. Her hearing aid donation program has supplied free hearing aids to people in the Four Corners Region as well as across Central and South America.