WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today Congresswoman Lois Capps (D-CA) welcomed key progress on her legislation to reauthorize the Newborn and Infant Screening and Intervention Program Act, as the bill was passed by the full House Energy and Commerce Committee.  The legislation was originally passed nine years ago as part of the Children’s Health Act and created the federal government's landmark Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) program within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.  A vote on the bill by the full House is expected later this spring.

“Early detection of hearing problems is critical to developing and implementing an effective treatment program for children who experience hearing loss,” said Capps a former school nurse.  “For far too long children with substantial hearing problems went years without these problems being detected and treated, to the detriment of the children and their families.  This landmark legislation put in place a successful comprehensive effort to detect hearing loss in children as soon as possible and our reauthorization of this bill builds on that success and enhances the detection program and support services so it will be even more effective moving forward.”

The initial legislation passed 1999, creating for the first time a comprehensive federal effort to assist states in establishing programs to detect hearing loss in every newborn and to promote appropriate treatment when hearing loss is diagnosed. 

Hearing loss in newborns is often undetected at birth, making it our nation’s most frequent birth defect.  National EHDI goals are to screen all infants before one month of age, identify hearing loss before three months of age, and have children with hearing loss enrolled in early intervention services before six months of age.

Reauthorization of EHDI will build upon the success of the program by addressing areas that continue to pose a challenge in detecting hearing loss in newborns, including providing critical family-to-family support programs, enabling the National Institute of Health to establish a post-doctoral research fellowship program to recruit researchers for early hearing detection and intervention, and providing the Department of Health and Human Services the authority to address the shortage of trained professionals that are necessary to make sure all newborns are screened.

When Congress first authorized the Early Hearing Detection and Intervention program, only around 3% of all babies in the United States were being screened at birth, and there were less than a dozen universal newborn hearing screening programs in the entire country.  Today, 93% of all infants in America are screened within one month of birth, and EHDI programs have been established in every state.

The Capps-Walsh bill will reauthorize the federal government's landmark Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) program and approve additional federal funding for release to the states to continue their own EHDI programming. 

Congresswoman Capps, a registered nurse and member of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Health, is a Co-Chair of the Congressional Hearing Caucus. 

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Pictured above: (center) Congresswoman Capps meets with Central Coast firefighters to discuss emergency preparedness.