2025 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference
March 9-11, 2025 • Pittsburgh, PA
DAVID L. LAWRENCE CONVENTION CENTER
Award Winner/Nominee Details 2025
Lisa Hunter
With great enthusiasm we nominate Dr. Lisa L. Hunter for the 2025 Antonia Brancia Maxon Award for EHDI Excellence. Lisa currently serves as Scientific Director for Audiology in the Communication Sciences Research Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and Professor of Otolaryngology at the University of Cincinnati. She has been a true champion for EHDI since the very beginning of her career and has made numerous contributions to advancing diagnosis of congenital hearing loss. Lisa is among the world’s foremost authorities on wideband reflectance and assessment of middle ear function in infants and young children, and she has made vital contributions in newborn hearing screening, diagnosis, and follow-up including barriers and facilitators of EHDI in the U.S. Her work in both tympanometry and otoacoustic emissions testing has informed the field of developmental trajectories of these measures. She has contributed to developing new immittance and electrophysiologic technologies and assessment approaches with normative data to evaluate the auditory system of infants that expedite early hearing detection and intervention. Her research on infants born preterm has revealed high rates of mild to moderate hearing loss that often goes undetected by standard newborn hearing screenings. Additionally, she has remained a steadfast champion of evidence-based practice by not only developing and informing our field of these technologies but also leading a grassroots effort to challenge audiologists to effectively use these technologies to expedite diagnosis. Her contributions to the advancement of audiology continue to lead to significant improvements in EHDI programs.
Lisa has always approached her contributions to EHDI with the child and family in mind. Her focus on family-centered care has been central to her overall body of work. She has used novel approaches to reach families who have been lost-to-follow-up through partnership with governmental agencies, most notably with WIC programs. She continues to identify how to best support families of children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing by conducting community-engaged research and implementing family-focused interventions to increase awareness of the importance of newborn hearing screening and reduce loss-to-follow-up. She achieves optimal outcomes by having a keen insight into family needs during the screening, diagnosis, and early intervention phases of the EHDI process.
Arguably, her largest contribution to EHDI excellence is through her mentorship. She is involved with undergraduates, graduate students, professionals in their early career as well as seasoned veterans, providing constructive insights and sharing a knowledge base about EHDI that is second to none. She is selfless with her time, being engaged in mentorship through the University of Cincinnati Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (LEND) program, which educates both AuD and PhD students, and with professionals throughout the country that she guides individually. It is her mentorship of students and professionals that will have the most lasting impact well beyond her own career that makes her particularly worthy of this prestigious award.
Dr. Hunter’s profound contributions to EHDI, her unwavering commitment to improving clinical practices, and her dedication to mentoring future leaders in audiology make her a truly deserving candidate for this prestigious award.