Education

Fall Voice Week

The Fall Voice Meeting

The Fall Voice Conference started in 2004 at the University of California, San Francisco as an outgrowth of the Pacific Voice Conference. The meeting is designed to stimulate spirited exchanges about the clinical care of patients with voice and swallowing disorders between voice scientists, speech-language pathologists, voice teachers, vocal coaches and laryngologists.

This 2-day conference is formatted yearly through a call for abstracts. Researchers are encouraged to submit abstracts describing their novel clinical research and practice patterns describing their methods of evaluation and/or treatment and patient outcomes. The abstracts are blindly evaluated by the program committee and selected for oral or poster presentation. Presentations are grouped by similarity of topics and then ample time is provided for discussion and debate amongst the presenter and audience regarding the merits of each presentation.

To keep each year’s conference novel, the program committee changes yearly. The program chairs for upcoming meetings are chosen by the current and immediate past program chairs from participants who have been active and shown interest in the conference. The program chairs then select their program committee. If you are interested in becoming involved, please be active in submitting your clinical research topics for consideration for presentation and contact the recent program chairs to inform them of your interest.

For additional information see the Fall Voice website.

Laryngology Fellow's Day

Laryngeal Fellows Day (LFD) began at the Fall Voice Conference of 2012 in New York City. It was established in order to provide aspiring and very new laryngologists the opportunity to meet with their peers and to have easy access to an outstanding laryngology educational opportunity. By design, it is restricted to laryngology fellowship applicants, current laryngology fellows, and those individuals during their first year of practice outside of their fellowship. This invitation allows them to get to know their immediate peers and also provides an education environment free from any concerns of the thoughts and comments of established senior laryngologists. We have found that this allows free and spontaneous interaction between the attendees and the various presenters. The meetings review voice, dysphagia, and airway issues, as well as practical issues of practice management, billing and coding, research and a good understanding of funding opportunities for laryngology research.

Year Directors Highlighted Guests
2012 Albert Merati Gayle Woodson
Peak Woo
2013 Albert Merati Robert Ossoff
2014 Blake Simpson Gaelyn Garrett
2015 Gregory Postma
James Burns
Robert Sataloff
2016 Peter Belafsky
John Ingle
Albert Merati
Robert Lorenz
Mike Hinni
2017 Gregory Postma
Tanya Meyer
Stacey Halum
2018 Mark Courey
Jeanne Hatcher
Gerry Burke
Neil Futran


The final session of each meeting involves a gathering called the Icarus Society. This is a confidential portion of the meeting in which cases resulting in adverse outcomes are reviewed with the goal of learning by the experience of others.

Early Career Laryngology

Early Career Laryngology (ECL) began at the 2014 Fall Voice Conference. It was established in order to provide mid career laryngologists the opportunity to meet with their peers and to share their knowledge and experience in laryngology and practice building. By design, it is restricted to laryngologist’s between 2-7 years after of their fellowship. The meetings review voice, dysphagia, and airway care, as well as practical issues of practice management, billing and coding, and research.

Year Directors
2014 Sunil Verma
Libby Smith
2015 Ted Mau
Melin Tan-Geller
2016 VyVy Young
David Rosow
2017 Matt Clary
Maggie Kuhn
Laura Matrka
2018 Ashli O’Rourke
Robbi Kupfer
Dan Fink

Speech Pathology Pre-Conference

The Speech Language Pathology Pre-Conference began at the 2013 Fall Voice Conference and has become the most popular pre-conference offering. The Pre-Conference is designed to make basic, translational and clinical research, accessible in a clinically applicable manner. It aims to provide a rich variety of clinical knowledge as well as very practical “pearls” from the presenters for participants of all levels of experience. The conference seeks to encourage high level, evidenced based clinical voice care and provide attendees with evaluation and therapeutic tools that can be immediately applied in their day to day practice.

Year Directors
2013 Edie Hapner
Jackie Gartner-Schmidt
2014 Jackie Gartner-Schmidt
Edie Hapner
Jenny Muckala
2015 Sarah Schneider
Ryan Branski
2016 Wendy LeBorgne
Eric Hunter
Jeannette LoVetri
2017 Amanda Gillespie
Chandler Thomas
2018 Sarah Schneider
Emily Malik
Lisa D’Oyley

Fall Voice Webinars

The mission of The Fall Voice Webinar series is to provide the Laryngology, Speech Pathology, and Voice community at large with a nurturing, collaborative, and challenging year round educational experience. The 3-4 webinars per year will promote innovation and excellence in education that will serve the broader mission of the yearly conference to greatly enhance the treatment of voice disorders.

For a list of webinars and additonal information see the Fall Voice Webinars site.

Advances and Controversies in Laryngology

Advances and Controversies in Laryngology (ACL), or known affectionately as the "Whirlyball meeting") is truly laryngology for laryngologists. ACL was born of an idea to create an environment in which experienced Laryngologists could learn from each other in a small group setting about clinical issues in Laryngology. The conversations are deep and time is allowed to explore the fundamentals and nuances of core topics in our field. The inaugural meeting was in 2009; ACL is convened on a roughly biennial basis. ACL is a very special meeting that brings together 40-50 US and international laryngologists from widely varied backgrounds and practices in order to foster in-depth discussion and interchange about contemporary issues in our field. The meeting is held in "the round" to facilitate group interaction and discussion. It maintains its reputation as one of the most popular and cherished laryngology meetings anywhere.

November 13-15, 2009
Program faculty: Jean Abitbol, Milan Amin, Peter Belafsky, Steve Bielamowicz, Andy Blitzer, Jim Burns, Paul Castellanos, Dinesh Chhetri, Fred Dikkers, Mark Courey, Gaelyn Garrett, Al Hillel, Norm Hogikyan, Andy McWorter, Al Merati, Greg Postma, Clark Rosen, Blake Simpson, John Sinacori, Lucian Sulica, Apurva Thekdi
Featured guests: Jonas Hydman, Guri Sandhu

December 3-5, 2010:
Program faculty: Milan Amin, Bob Bastian, Peter Belafsky, Joel Blumin, Ryan Branski, Guierrmo Campos, Mark Courey, Ramon Franco, Gaelyn Garrett, Marcus Hess, Andy McWorter, Al Merati, Robert Ossoff, Greg Postma, Mark Remarkle, Clark Rosen, Robert Sataloff, Lucian Sulica, Peak Woo, Gayle Woodson
Featured guests: Craig Derkay, James Netterville

August 10-12, 2012:
Program faculty: Joel Blumin, Jim Burns, Michael Johns, Greg Postma, Catherine Rees-Lintzenich, Clark Rosen, Blake Simpson, Lucian Sulica
Featured guests: Nikki Johnston, Heather Bonilha

December 6-8, 2013:
Program faculty: Peter Belafsky, Joel Blumin, Dinesh Chhetri, Ramon Franco, Marcus Hess, Norm Hogikyan, Michael Johns, Andy McWhorter, Al Merati, Pavun Mallur, Clark Rosen, Lucian Sulica, Apu Thekdi, Peak Woo
Featured guests: Josie Campbell, Marina Vecci

December 4-6, 2015:
Program faculty: Milan Amin, Bob Bastian, Jonathan Bock, Peter Belafsky, Stacey Halum, Al Hillel, Michael Johns, Andy McWorter, Al Merati, Michael Pitman, Clark Rosen, Adam Rubin, Blake Simpson, Lucian Sulica
Featured guests: Dominique Pollara

December 2-3, 2017:
Program faculty: Milan Amin, Mark Courey, Norm Hogikyan, Michael Johns, Clark Rosen, David Rosow, Babak Sadoughi, John Sinacori, Libby Smith, Lucian Sulica, Peak Woo
Featured guests: Martin Burton, Kurt Rosen