Adoption of a Medical Model to Address Literacy Deficits in Children and Adolescents

This commentary addresses the significant role of speech-language pathologists in the assessment and treatment of literacy disorders. Given the broad definition of literacy which encompasses reading, writing, speaking and listening, it is important to realize that while these areas may seem academic in nature, especially for educationally-based speech-language pathologists, they indeed have a medical basis to them and should be assessed and treated as such. This is in light of a deep, broad base of multi-disciplinary research known as the science of reading. This commentary explains the relationship between the areas that speech-language pathologists target in literacy and the importance of adopting a medical model rather than a disease model when working with individuals to address literacy deficits. Doing so allows speech-language pathologists to address the whole person and not just their disorder.

Keywords:Speech-language pathologist, Literacy, Science of reading, ICF