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Impact of Hearing Loss and Comorbidity on Virginia’s Children and Families
Overview
This research project is a collaborative effort of the Partnership for People with Disabilities and the Virginia Department of Health. Our funding comes from the CDC’s National Center for Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, through a cooperative arrangement with the Association of University Centers on Disabilities. The long-term research objectives are: (1) to determine how comorbid congenital anomalies affect the identification, evaluation, and treatment of children with hearing loss and, (2) to assess the overall impact of a dual diagnosis of hearing loss and other congenital anomaly on the child and the family. We will link and analyze existing health system databases and talk to parents about their experiences. What we learn will help us improve coordination and delivery of services, and reduce barriers that interfere with children’s receiving appropriate and timely intervention for hearing loss.
Major Activities
The research will take place in two stages:
- First, we will use innovative approaches in biobehavioral informatics to link Virginia’s birth defects and hearing screening databases. Analyzing the resulting data will give us a comprehensive, population-based picture of the diagnostic and treatment histories of children with hearing loss or hearing loss and coexisting congenital anomalies.
- Second, we will conduct telephone interviews with the most recent cohort of parents of identified children to build a context for interpreting the findings from the database analyses.
Contact
Kathleen Bodisch Lynch, Co-Principal Investigator, at (804)828-9580, kblynch@vcu.edu
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