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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today Congresswoman Lois Capps (D-CA) and Congressman Jim Walsh (R-NY) were joined by 23 of their House colleagues in introducing legislation to reauthorize the Newborn and Infant Screening and Intervention Program Act. Seven years ago the legislation was incorporated into the Children’s Health Act which created the federal government's landmark Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) program within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
“Many of our children have substantial hearing problems that remain undetected and untreated for far too long,” said Capps a registered nurse. “This lack of awareness is devastating for children and their families. This legislation is essential to the comprehensive effort to detect hearing loss in children as soon as possible in order to implement an effective treatment program.”
“One in every one thousand infants born in the United States today has a severe or profound hearing problem," said Walsh. "Undetected, permanent hearing loss negatively affects the social, emotional, cognitive, and academic development that is crucial to a child's first years of life. Delayed identification and management of hearing loss has a lifelong impact. This bill works to change that for every child born in America."
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 and Congressman Walsh’s efforts on this issue have received praise from the World Council on Hearing Health, National Campaign for Hearing Health, American Academy of Audiology, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and American Academy of Pediatrics. The legislation now proceeds to Mrs. Capps’ Subcommittee on Health for consideration.
Congressman Walsh is the co-founder of the Congressional Hearing Health Caucus - a bipartisan effort to sustain the momentum behind advances in hearing healthcare, science, and public policy throughout the United States.
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.
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