On this episode of The Swallow Your Pride Podcast, I sit down with Nicole Schaen-Heacock, PhD, CCC-SLP, a postdoctoral fellow in the Advanced Fellowship in Geriatrics at the William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital in Madison, working in Dr. Nicole Rogus-Pulia’s swallowing and salivary bioscience lab. Nicole won first place for the New Investigator Award at this year’s DRS conference for part of her dissertation on how the timing of swallow-based intervention affects outcomes in a head and neck cancer treatment model. We get into her research, her path from clinician to PhD to postdoc, and a candid conversation about doing hard academic work while raising twin toddlers.
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Dr. Schaen-Heacock is a postdoctoral fellow in the Advanced Fellowship in Geriatrics program at the William S Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital under the mentorship of Dr. Nicole Rogus-Pulia (Swallowing and Salivary Bioscience Lab). Affiliated with both the Madison VA and University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Medicine, her work centers on two tenets: improving proactive dysphagia care and investigating the intersections of aging, frailty, and swallow function in both Veteran and civilian patients diagnosed with head and neck cancer.
“Game-Changing” Papers
Pre-PhD/start of research experience: Hutcheson KA, Bhayani MK, Beadle BM, et al. Eat and exercise during radiotherapy or chemoradiotherapy for pharyngeal cancers: use it or lose it. JAMA Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2013;139(11):1127-1134. doi:10.1001/jamaoto.2013.4715
Pre-Dissertation/during PhD program: Messing BP, Ward EC, Lazarus CL, et al. Prophylactic Swallow Therapy for Patients with Head and Neck Cancer Undergoing Chemoradiotherapy: A Randomized Trial. Dysphagia. 2017;32(4):487-500. doi:10.1007/s00455-017-9790-6
More recent: Manduchi B, Sandulache VC, Tark JY, et al. Examining the Relationship Between Dysphagia, Eating-Related Symptoms, and Diet Quality Among Oropharyngeal Cancer Patients During Critical Stages of Cancer Survivorship: The U-DINE Study. Head Neck. 2025;47(10):2816-2826. doi:10.1002/hed.28206
