CHOICES for Parents sponsors
Universal Newborn Hearing Screening Day

CHICAGO (March 30, 2005) – The first-ever Universal Newborn Hearing Screening Day in Illinois will take place at 1 p.m., Tuesday, April 5, 2005, at the James R. Thompson Center, Room 9-031, 100 W. Randolph St. in Chicago. The event is sponsored by CHOICES for Parents, a coalition of parents and professionals throughout Illinois that promotes the health and development of children with newly identified hearing loss by providing their parents with immediate access to support, information and resources to help families make the best decisions they can for their children.

“When parents learn their child has a hearing loss, it often is a shock,” says Jill Sahakian, director, Chicago Hearing Society, a division of Anixter Center, one of the largest nonprofit organizations in Chicago that assists people with disabilities to live and work successfully in the community. “Ninety percent of deaf babies are born to hearing parents, so there usually is no family history of hearing loss,” says Sahakian. Chicago Hearing Society, a founding member organization of Choices for Parents, is a division of Anixter Center in Chicago.

There has been an increased emphasis on hearing screening for infants in recent years, explains Karen Aguilar, coordinator, CHOICES for Parents. The Illinois legislature mandated that, by the end of 2002, all 135-plus birthing hospitals in the state must screen the hearing of newborns before babies go home from the hospital. Every day in America, according to the July 2003 edition of The Hearing Review, approximately one in 1,000 newborns — or 33 babies — is born profoundly deaf and another two or three of every 1,000 babies are born with a partial hearing loss, making hearing loss the number-one disability among newborns in America.

Michael Lotke, MD, has worked with the deaf community throughout his career as a pediatrician. Lotke operates the pediatric deaf clinic at Mt. Sinai in Chicago. He says the primary benefit of mandatory newborn screening is that it has decreased the age of hearing loss detection from an average of 2½ years of age to several months. These two years that have been “re-gained” make an extraordinary difference in the life of a young child. “Undiagnosed hearing loss can result in delayed socialization and social skills, as well as a lifelong disadvantage in linguistic achievement,” says Lotke.

Additionally, children with undiagnosed and untreated hearing losses can quickly become isolated from their family members. “A child may even get yelled at for ‘not listening’ or not paying attention,” says Lotke. He says early intervention is important, too, so that parents can begin to look at treatments and strategies, including the learning of sign language, hearing aids and cochlear implants.

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The mission of the Lester and Rosalie Anixter Center is to assist people with disabilities to live and work successfully in the community. Anixter Center is a leading provider of high-quality vocational, residential and educational options, substance abuse prevention and treatment, and health care. Anixter Center is an advocate for the rights of people with disabilities to be full and equal members of the community.