2025 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference
March 9-11, 2025 • Pittsburgh, PA
Award Winner/Nominee Details 2023
Melanie Morris
On behalf of Georgia Mobile Audiology, a program of the Georgia Dept of Education's State Schools Division, I am nominating Dr. Melanie Morris for the Antonia Brancia Maxon Award for EHDI Excellence. Dr. Morris is a pediatric audiologist for the Georgia Mobile Audiology program. This program was started and designed to fill the gaps in services across the state of Georgia, and to particularly target families who are vulnerable, including families in rural areas, families in poverty, and families with limited access to services. We acquired a mobile truck to travel across the state and provide on-site services for families who had limited mobility. However, during COVID, the program was grounded and unable to travel for a period of months. Like many others, we began to investigate the possibility of a tele-health visits for infant screening to continue to serve families during the pandemic.
Dr. Morris is directly responsible for the success of the tele-audiology program by (a) contributing to the development of the tele-audiology training manual for additional pediatric audiologists to follow when working with the program; (b) partnering with individual district EHDI Coordinators to refer families to our program; (c) using technology to create a unique sign-up system for ease of use for EHDI Coordinators; (d) training all of our parent navigators to become audiology assistants; and (e) creating and delivering training to reduce the referral rate for hospitals to maximize the use of the audiologists' time.
As a result of Dr. Morris' efforts, our most vulnerable families have access to a follow-up diagnostic test immediately after a failed screening, which reduces the need for multiple trips or days off work, or transportation arrangements. I believe that Dr. Morris' contributions to the field will ultimately reduce loss to follow-up from screening to diagnostic in a significant way throughout the state of Georgia.