Programs

Children’s Memorial Hospital

In 2002, the Foundation For Hearing and Speech Rehabilitation (FHSR) affiliated with Children’s Memorial Hospital to provide primary funding for a series of one-of-a-kind programs that help children born with severe hearing loss communicate more effectively.

A Year of Milestones

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Children's Cochlear Implant Program, a comprehensive, nationally renowned program to meet the complex needs of children living with hearing loss and their families. Nancy M. Young, MD, Head of Children's Section of Otology and Medical Director of the Audiology and Cochlear Implant Program at Children's has now performed more than 1,000 cochlear implant procedures, making ours one of the largest programs in the nation, if not the largest serving exclusively children. These children and families benefit from a full array of services and programs that address short- and long-term needs of the patients. Many of these services would not be possible without the support of the Foundation for Hearing and Speech Rehabilitation.

Children's cochlear implant program received international exposure in July, as the hospital and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine hosted the 13th Symposium on Cochlear Implants in Children. Dr. Young served as course director and program committee chair for the conference, held for the first time in Chicago, with record breaking attendance of 1,165 professionals including 400 international participants.

The interdisciplinary nature of the symposium attracted clinicians and researchers from the fields of otolaryngology, audiology, speech pathology, deaf education, industry and other allied health professions. The symposium was supported by a prestigious conference grant from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD).

In March, 2011, Dr. Young was promoted to Professor of Otolaryngology Head & Neck Surgery at the Feinberg School of Medicine. Her contributions were also recognized on "Hearing Detection & Intervention Day" in when she was honored by CHOICES for Parents, a statewide coalition of parents and professionals ensuring children with hearing loss and their families receive the necessary resources, advocacy, information, services and support.

In addition, this year two of Dr Young's research publications (on research studies described in our 2010 report) received significant media attention. One study focused on the current treatment of children deafened by meningitis and the role of vaccination in reducing, but not eliminating, this cause of deafness. The second study revealed that almost a third of children who received cochlear implants at Children's Memorial had passed newborn hearing screening, resulting in delay in diagnosis and implantation. This important public health issue is one we are further investigating.

Background and History

The nationally renowned Pediatric Otology Department, led by Nancy M. Young, MD, provides expert services to infants with suspected hearing loss and serves as a referral point for a broad array of programs and services throughout the country; however, their resources are stretched to capacity.  The FHSR’s support is having an extraordinary impact on the Pediatric Otology Program by supporting programs, otherwise unavailable in the Midwest, which are either poorly reimbursed or not reimbursed at all by health insurance plans.  Working with Children’s Memorial, the FHSR is striving to assure that all hearing impaired children have the opportunity to develop to their full potential, enjoy the same social and educational opportunities as their peers, and lead healthy and fulfilling lives.

The Foundation for Hearing and Speech Rehabilitation is committed to providing primary underwriting for the following programs and services at Children’s Memorial:

Improved Psychosocial Care for Families of Newly Diagnosed Children

With the support of FHSR, Children's Memorial hired social workers dedicated to working with the families of children with newly identified hearing loss. The social workers work closely with Dr. Young and the audiology/rehabilitation staff to provide timely and personalized assistance to families confronting the diagnosis of hearing loss. Together, they provide a wide range of services - including helping families navigate the intricacies of treatment, communication, and education - for their special-needs child.

Expanded Technical and Administrative Services for Children with Assisted Hearing Devices

With the support of FHSR, Children’s Memorial hired a hearing aid technician (who is a recipient of a cochlear implant) to help families understand and troubleshoot problems with their child’s assistive technology. This unique staff position allows Children’s Memorial to expand the education that it provides to parents about their child’s assisted hearing device, whether it is a hearing aid, bone-anchored hearing device, cochlear implant, or FM system. The hearing aid technician also takes impressions to provide new ear molds for infants and children with hearing aids, an important service for young children whose ear canals are rapidly growing, maintains the hearing aids in the loaner program, and tracks orders to ensure that patients receive their personal assisted hearing devices in a timely manner.

Improved Access to Education: The Hart Family Cochlear Implant Educational Liaison

As a consequence of early implantation, more parents now have the realistic expectation that their child can develop age-appropriate speech and language and have the potential to be educated in the mainstream with their hearing peers. But access to technology is simply not enough. To achieve these expectations, children and their parent needs very specialized assistance. Working in conjunction with Dr. Nancy Young and an outstanding multidisciplinary team, the Hart Family Cochlear Implant Educational Liaison provides a broad array of services that include working with families to help them identify educational philosophies, therapies and school placement that best serve their child's development of communication and academic skills; instructing school systems how to provide the tools necessary to ensure that children with cochlear implants have the best opportunities to achieve classroom success; and, advocating for the children during school Individual Educational Plan (IEP) meetings, where a child's placement and the type of services the school district must provide is determined.

Special Needs Fund

This fund gives Children’s Memorial the flexibility to meet the continually developing needs of its patients. The fund helps to support the purchase of new assisted hearing devices for the loaner program, the repair of donated assisted hearing devices, the purchase of new advanced technology for diagnostic audiology, and the planning of workshops for parents, audiologists, speech pathologists and educators.