Nationwide “only 54% of infants who do not pass their newborn hearing tests actually receive the recommended follow up hearing evaluation, the remaining 46% are lost to the system. (JCIH, 2007)
Hearing loss is the most common congenital health concern in the United States.
In the U.S. approximately one in 1,000 newborns is born profoundly deaf. Another 6 out of 1,000 babies are born with partial hearing loss. For infants in the neonatal intensive care unit, the incidence is almost 10 times as high.
Babies born with hearing loss are starting from a point of neurological emergency because they have a limited window of time in which to catch up. They have already missed out on 20 weeks of development of their auditory brain pathways prior to birth, and they continue to miss out on neural development until they are diagnosed and receive amplification and intervention.
Precious Ears is a joint outreach program funded by The Lake Drive Foundation to reach the families of babies who do not pass their newborn hearing screenings and are at risk of falling through the cracks.
Each year an average of 3,800 babies are born at St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital in Paterson. The Precious Ears coordinator visits with new mothers in the hospital to explain newborn hearing screening, then build a partnership assisting with education and referrals to ensure the infants who do not pass their initial newborn hearing screenings receive the requisite comprehensive audiological evaluations follow up in the first three months. Since the inception of The Precious Ears Program in May, 2010, the program has increased the follow up by 50%.
