Impact of a Workplace Vocal Health Promotion Program on Vocal Doses in College Professors: a Colombian Exploratory Study

Impacto de un programa de promoción de la salud vocal en los lugares de trabajo en las dosis vocales de los profesores universitarios: un estudio exploratorio en Colombia

Published 2025-07-04

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Vol. 7 No. 2 (2025)
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Research Article
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Atará-Piraquive Ángela P, Bottalico P, Cantor-Cutiva LC. Impact of a Workplace Vocal Health Promotion Program on Vocal Doses in College Professors: a Colombian Exploratory Study. Rev. Investig. Innov. Cienc. Salud [Internet]. 2025 Jul. 4 [cited 2025 Jul. 9];7(2):1-16. Available from: https://riics.info/index.php/RCMC/article/view/448
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https://doi.org/10.46634/riics.448
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Ángela Patricia Atará-Piraquive
National University of Colombia image/svg+xml
Roles:  
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1874-2462
Pasquale Bottalico
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign image/svg+xml
Roles:  
Perfil Google Scholar
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7394-4796
Lady Catherine Cantor-Cutiva
East Tennessee State University image/svg+xml
Roles:  
Perfil Google Scholar
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4530-4345
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Ángela Patricia Atará-Piraquive,

Department of Collective Health; Universidad Nacional de Colombia; Bogotá; Colombia.

Pasquale Bottalico,

Department of Speech and Hearing Science; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Urbana-Champaign; United States.

Lady Catherine Cantor-Cutiva,

Department of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology; East Tennessee State University; Johnson City; United States.

Objective. To determine the effect of a workplace vocal health promotion (WVHP) program on Colombian college professors’ vocal doses. This is an exploratory pre-post-intervention study.

Methods. College professors were randomly allocated to one of two groups: no-intervention or intervention. Participants filled out a general questionnaire and were monitored using a vocal dosimeter during the complete duration of an in-person class before and after their participation in the program. The WVHP program consisted of four sessions (2 in-person and 2 online sessions; one per week) focused on vocal hygiene and training and teaching-learning strategies to be implemented inside the classrooms.

Results. The intervention group (n = 6) had a 3% decrease in time dose percentage after participating in the WVHP program, whereas professors from the no-intervention group had an increase of 1% after the follow-up (p >0.05). Participants from the no-intervention group had a statistically significant increased distance dose normalized (β = 0.078; p = 0.01) in comparison with the intervention group.

Conclusions. The WVHP program seems to be a good preventive strategy for reducing voice disorders among occupational voice users. Although statistical significance was not achieved for most vocal dose parameters, the observed trends suggest that work-based structured vocal health interventions may contribute to safer and more sustainable voice use in occupational settings.

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