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10/10/2015  |   8:30 AM - 9:45 AM   |  Andrew Foster Auditorium

Community-based Education Model for Promoting Early Childhood Hearing Outreach

Since the advent of Universal Newborn Hearing Screening in the United States, over 95% ofchildren receive a newborn hearing screening within the first month of life. However, many states struggle with loss-to-follow-up rates exceeding 50-75%, leading to delayed identification of hearing loss in children, particularly those living in under-resourced areas. These difficulties mirror the challenges seen worldwide with regard to identifying hearing loss in children; there is a lack of trained personnel, a lack of equipment, and poor understanding about the ramifications of hearing loss in childhood. An avenue for identifying these children is by providing otoacoustic emission (OAE) screenings in home- and center-based settings, using staff and volunteers who are already familiar with the children and families. Since 2012, the Illinois ECHO program has been training nurses, parents, and health-department officials to provide OAE screenings and to monitor follow-up for low-income and under-resourced families. In 2014, the responsibility for the training program was transferred to Illinois State University via a subcontract with the University of Illinois-Chicago Division of Specialized Care for Children. Since this transfer, the program has linked with local health departments across the state of Illinois to ensure geographic coverage that would include rural, urban, and underserved communities. The goal of the proposed presentation is to inform CGHH Conference attendees about an early-childhood hearing outreach (ECHO) training program for novice screeners, developed in Illinois (USA) to promote the engagement of community-health professionals in the early identification of hearing loss in children.

• 1. Attendees will learn about a training approach for using OAE screening in early childhood hearing outreach, designed to utilize community members and lay personnel to interface with the community.
• 2. Attendees will be able to describe considerations in setting up a large-scale training effort across a large and diverse geographic area.

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Lindsay Bondurant (POC,Primary Presenter), East Tennessee State University, lmbondurant@gmail.com;
Lindsay Bondurant is an Assistant Professor of Audiology at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, TN. Her clinical area of specialization is pediatric diagnostics and aural (re)habilitation. Her research lab, known as the HATCH (Hearing Access via TeleAudiology and Community Health) Lab, focuses on efforts to improve audiology service-provision to underserved populations including children, people living in poverty, and people with intellectual disabilities. Dr. Bondurant earned her Ph.D. in Communication Sciences and Disorders from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2010.