OGDENSBURG -- Vania M. Falen has been hired by Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center as a speech-language pathologist.

Falen has 18 years of experience across a variety of hospital and rehabilitation settings, including work with adult populations with swallowing, speech and communication difficulties resulting from stroke, head and neck cancer, and other illnesses or voice disorders.

She specializes in treating infant and pediatric feeding and swallowing disorders, infant and child developmental and language disorders, traumatic brain injury, and medically fragile populations.

Falen most recently worked at Memorial Hospital of Colorado Springs, Colo., where she worked as an inpatient and outpatient therapist and a clinical specialist in the areas of video swallow studies, standard swallowing evaluations and treatment of feeding and swallowing disorders.

She has also held positions at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, Voorhees Pediatric Rehabilitation Hospital in New Jersey, the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf and various outpatient rehab clinics.

“I enjoy diversity in the field of speech pathology and have historically enjoyed working in a medical center…Claxton-Hepburn felt like home.”

Falen treats both inpatients and outpatients and is available by appointment Monday through Friday at 393-8880, extension 2104.