July 5, 2007

Unfortunately, during clinic on Tuesday, no clients were scheduled. Thursday only had one re-screen. The little boy I re-screened did not pass his original kindergarten screening, but he did pass the evaluation at the clinic.
Since I did not really see anything too exciting in clinic, I thought I would just write about a recent article I saw in the ASHA Leader. By this point we all know about Universal Newborn Hearing Screenings. The article was about the lack of intervention for children who have a confirmed hearing loss. As stated in the article, currently there is a 95% screening rate for newborns, but the U.S. Surgeon General wants this rate even higher. The article presented some alarming statistics. The author discussed that 34% of the babies who did not pass their initial hearing screening never received a confirmation of the diagnosis after that initial screening. It was also stated that 23% of those who had a confirmed diagnosis were not referred to early intervention services. The article stated that 40 states have EDHI laws and 5 have established voluntary screening programs. I thought this article was pretty interesting. I was really shocked to see how few newborns are referred to early intervention services. I don't know where the fault lies for that, but we definitely need to make sure we are doing everything we can to help these families find the services they need.

Reference:

Shafer, D.N. (2007, June19). Infant screening gains media spotlight. The ASHA Leader, 12(8), 1, 7.