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Source: Janet Basu
415-476-2557
19 July 2000
UCSF to launch regional coordination center July 24 to support California's statewide newborn hearing screening program
When California Health and Welfare Secretary Grantland Johnson announces the official startup of statewide newborn hearing screening on Monday, July 24, he also officially establishes the keystones of the California program, three Newborn Hearing Coordinating Centers.
Located at the University of California, San Francisco and two other institutions in Southern California and the Central Valley, these geographically based centers are unique to California. They will certify and monitor local hospitals to maintain quality hearing screening and manage a tracking system to make sure newborns identified with possible hearing loss are not lost to followup. The goal: that every family of a baby with hearing loss can get help to give the child appropriate early intervention within the first six months of life. In states without coordinated tracking systems, up to 50 percent of the infants who fail the newborn screen do not receive the necessary services to determine whether they have a significant hearing loss.
"For a baby born with a significant hearing loss, the first few months of life are crucial to the ability to learn to use language," said UCSF audiologist Toni Iten Will, MSPA, director of the UCSF-based Hearing Coordination Center for the Bay Area/Coastal Region.
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