Hearing Loss in Children

· Everyday in the United States, approximately 1 in 1,000 newborns (or 33 babies every day) is born profoundly deaf with another 2-3 out of 1,000 babies born with partial hearing loss, making hearing loss the number one birth defect in America.

· 14.9% of U.S. children aged six to nineteen have a measurable hearing loss in one or both ears.

· 37% of children with only minimal hearing loss fail at least one grade.

· The average age of identification of early-onset hearing loss in the U.S. is two years of age.

· Of the 12,000 babies in the United States born annually with some form of hearing loss, only half exhibit a risk factor – meaning that if only high-risk infants are screened, half of the infants with some form of hearing loss will not be tested and identified.  In actual implementation, risk-based newborn hearing screening programs identify only 10-20% of infants with hearing loss.  When hearing loss is detected beyond the first few months of life, the most critical time for stimulating the auditory pathways to hearing centers of the brain may be lost, significantly delaying speech and language development.

· Only 69% of babies are now screened for hearing loss before 1 month of age (up from only 22% in 1998).  Of the babies screened, only 56% who needed diagnostic evaluations actually received them by 3 months of age.   Moreover, only 53% of those diagnosed with hearing loss were enrolled in early intervention programs by 6 months of age.  As a result, these children tend to later re-emerge in our schools’ special education (IDEA, Part B) programs.

· When children are not identified and do not receive early intervention, special education for a child with hearing loss costs schools an additional $420,000, and has a lifetime cost of approximately $1 million per individual.