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10/10/2015  |   2:15 PM - 3:00 PM   |  Andrew Foster Auditorium

Challenges to Identifying Newborn Hearing Loss on Remote and Rural Islands

The presentation describes how implementing a newborn hearing screening program in rural and remote communities with limited resources requires a passionate commitment to identifying permanent hearing loss as early in life as possible. That passion must translate into securing support of the local community and qualified professionals, acquiring equipment, providing training, implementing a data-management system, and utilizing quality control to continually improve the identification process. Moreover, providing outreach into more remote areas requires establishing a base on islands with larger populations, greater facilities, and trained local persons willing to carry services across the waters to islands with small populations and few facilities appropriate for hearing screening. Further, implementing the screening process is only the beginning, and easiest, part! Once babies are referred from the screening process, huge challenges remain! “Limited resources” means that remote areas have no audiologists, no ENT specialists, no speech-language pathologists, no teachers for the deaf, and no providers of early intervention. Also lacking are groups for parent support and any support services for children with other special needs. The presentation shows, however, how talented local personnel, working with itinerant professionals, can create diagnostic programs, medical and surgical treatment, and comprehensive early intervention services and can provide outreach to children and families on remote islands. The presentation focuses on successes in overcoming challenges in meeting the needs of children with permanent hearing loss and other special needs in an environment with few local resources.

• Participants will learn about barriers to implementing newborn hearing screening in low-resource environments
• Participants will appreciate the near-impossibility of providing quality intervention services for infants and toddlers identified with special needs.

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Agnes Flood-Tse (Primary Presenter), Ministry of Health, Majuro Hospital, weijane2010@gmail.com;
Ms. Flood-Tse, originally from the nation of Kiribati, is a long-term resident in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. She obtained her Certificate as a Registered Nurse and Midwife from the Kiribati School of Nursing in 1990. She holds a nursing license from the Ministry of Health in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Over the years her abilities, skills, and knowledge have been recognized with increasing levels of responsibility. After serving as a physician-replacement on the outer islands and as a Public Health Nurse in the Ministry of Health, she moved from the Medical Ward to become the Head Nurse in the Outpatient Department and the Surgical Ward. Since 2009, she has been the Quality Assurance Officer, overseeing medical practices at the Majuro Hospital and in the Outpatient Clinics. In addition to her responsibilities in the Ministry of Health, she became interested in hearing screening through a training opportunity provided by the Ministry of Education, learning to perform audiometric screening and audiological diagnostic tests on school children. When a grant was developed for newborn hearing screening, she was recommended to become an initial part of the project. She began volunteering to do newborn hearing screening in 2010 when the program began. In 2012, she was recruited to be the screening supervisor and data manager for newborn hearing screening. Since 2010, Ms. Flood-Tse has spoken annually at national EHDI conferences. The newborn hearing screening program would not exist without her passion for identifying hearing problems in young children, her commitment to program excellence, and her concerns for assisting families of children with special needs.