Maureen Lefton-Greif

Maureen A. Lefton-Greif, PhD, CCC/SLP, BCS-S, ASHA-F is Professor Emerita in Medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. Lefton-Greif’s clinical practice and research focus on feeding/swallowing development, and the evaluation and management of its disorders. Her specific research interest is on swallowing disorders (dysphagia) in child and adults diagnosed with complex aerodigestive and rare conditions with pediatric origins. She participates in the multidisciplinary clinical and research group studying the natural history of ataxia telangiectasia (A-T) and is co-investigator for a NIH-supported grants to develop a functional scale for clinical trial readiness. Her prior NIH funded research led to the development of the first standardized, reliable and validated scale for the videofluoroscopic assessment of swallowing function of bottle-fed children. As an extension of this work, she is a co-investigator on an NIH funded grant to study Radiation Exposure in Infants and Children from Videofluoroscopic Swallow Studies. She developed the Feeding/Swallowing Impact Survey (FS-IS), which is the first outcome measure to assess the impact of children’s feeding and swallowing problems on their caregivers, and has been translated into Turkish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Persian. She has published more than 45 peer-reviewed articles, 13 chapters, and co-edited 2 books. Dr. Lefton-Greif is Fellow of the American Speech-Language Hearing Association (ASHA), a founding member of the ASHA’s Board of Certified Specialists in Swallowing and Swallowing Disorders, an Associate Editor for the Journal of Dysphagia, and Co-Chair of Dysphagia Research Society’s Pediatric Dysphagia Special Interest Group.