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10/13/2017  |   5:30 PM - 7:15 PM   |  West Ballroom at Shalala Student Services Building

 School Age Hearing Screening for Developing Countries: Practical and Ethical Considerations

   School Age Hearing Screening for Developing Countries: Practical and Ethical Considerations Mark Partain B.A., Haley Ravndal B.S., Patricia McCarthy, Ph.D. Rush University Humanitarian hearing screenings are common missions to developing countries and low-resource communities.  These hearing screenings provide information about the status of the auditory system for many people who would not normally have access to this type of hearing health care.   However, humanitarian hearing screenings in the developing world can create ethical complications of referral in an already overcrowded medical system and difficulty of follow up, hampered by a lack of formal audiology training for the sparse audiology services that may be available and/or accessible in the area.               In this study, we describe the development and implementation of a hearing screening protocol including pure tone testing and tympanometry for school aged children in Moshi, Tanzania, a city of 185,000 people.   Equipment, methods, data recording and logistics of developing and implementing a screening protocol in a developing country are presented. Through the use of pass/fail pure tone audiometry and immittance testing, we determine the need for audiologic follow-up as well as need for medical or educational intervention. Our hearing screening protocol aimed to not only identify children with significant hearing loss, it also targeted borderline to mild hearing losses that can be compensated for by using classroom placement and teacher education.   Issues including scheduling, screening environment, false positive/false negative rates and reliability will be presented. Further, we review the complex ethical considerations encountered in developing a screening protocol in Tanzania.   The challenges of reducing excessive referral rates, providing follow-up services and avoiding overburdening local medical systems are discussed.

• Understand the ethical considerations required for conducting hearing screenings in developing countries.
• Understand the challenges of reducing excessive referral rates when implementing hearing screenings in areas with sparse audiology services.
• Understand the steps in developing a hearing screening protocol.

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Mark Partain (Primary Presenter), Rush University, Mark_I_Partain@rush.edu;

ASHA DISCLOSURE: Financial - Nonfinancial -

AAA DISCLOSURE: Financial - No relevant financial relationship exists.

Haley Ravndal (Co-Presenter), Rush University, Haley_ravndal@rush.edu;

ASHA DISCLOSURE: Financial - Nonfinancial -

AAA DISCLOSURE: Financial - No relevant financial relationship exists.