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Early Childhood Hearing Screening: an ECHO of Newborn Hearing Screening

Presented by: William Eiserman, Terry Foust, Jeff Hoffman, and Lenore Shisler

Increasing focus is being placed upon the importance of expanding the notion of Early Hearing Detection and Intervention to incorporate periodic early childhood hearing screening. These efforts can not only help reduce the nearly 50% loss to follow-up/documentation from newborn hearing screening, but also help to identify children with late onset or progressive hearing losses that could never have been identified at birth.

Over the past 8 years, NCHAM's Early Childhood Hearing Outreach (ECHO) Initiative has developed training and technical assistance resources to support periodic early childhood screening in Early Head Start settings as well as in Part C and health care settings.

This pre-session is designed for audiologists and other EHDI professionals who are interested in learning about the context in which periodic early childhood hearing screenings are already taking place, how these screening programs can interface with EHDI programs, the roles EHDI professionals can play in promoting and supporting periodic early childhood hearing screenings, and the practical resources that are available to develop community based periodic early childhood hearing screening programs in settings like Early Head Start programs, Part C programs and health care provider offices. This session will focus on hearing screening protocols for early childhood populations (particularly 0-3 year olds) challenges associated with follow-up, and equipment concerns that are unique to providing Otocoustic Emissions screening to 0-3 year olds in natural settings.