States awarded a 2001 CDC EHDI Cooperative Agreement 

Program Announcement ( pdf format) for the FY2000 EHDI Cooperative Agreement     

For more information about EHDI state programs please visit  Utah State University's NCHAM website

• CDC funded cooperative agreements to 15 states to promote state-based surveillance and tracking systems for Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI). EHDI tracking and surveillance systems will be designed to ensure minimal loss to follow-up by monitoring the status and progress of infants through the 3 components of the EHDI program (screening, identification, and intervention). The EHDI tracking and surveillance systems are to be integrated with other screening programs for infants and children, such as newborn metabolic screening and birth defects registries.

• Thirteen of the states are considered to be Level I, which means that at the time of their application they were either in the process of developing an EHDI program or they did not have an EHDI program.

• The remaining two states are Level II. This simply means that they already have an existing EHDI  program that includes information about at least 75% of infants born (from a minimum 0f 30,000 births per year). Level II States will work with CDC to conduct research in priority areas.

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I. Arkansas   

Background and Current Status:

Arkansas Department of Health Infant Hearing Program (IHP) has been in existence since 1982. Since 1995, a paper screen has been in effect to refer high-risk infants for further assessment. In 1999, legislation was enacted which mandates UNHS in hospitals with more than 50 annual births, which would cover about 98% of newborns. 

As of July 2000, 28 of the 57 birthing facilities have Universal Newborn Hearing Screening programs. Although 72% of births occur at these 28 hospitals, only 57% of newborns were screened in 1999 because these facilities are not uniformly implementing the programs. Results reported to the IHP are entered by hand into a non-network mainframe computer. Currently, routine reporting of confirmed cases to IHP is lacking.

Although most areas of the state contain adequate audiological services, the southeastern region lacks these services.

Proposed Tracking and Surveillance Activities:

The main goal for the first year of the project is the establishment and implementation of a software system to track newborns, with data entered before hospital discharge. This electronic system is to be coordinated for information sharing among various infant-related programs within the Department of Health. Also, an agreement for sharing identifying information among several state agencies will be pursued. Monitoring and reporting systems will be analyzed and revised as EDHI is put into place.

IHP assesses the program efficiency of individual hospitals, and aims for a referral rate of less than 10% for each hospital by year 2. Tracking of children with confirmed hearing loss is problematic because diagnostic results are not routinely reported to the IHP. A year 2 goal is to work with audiologists and the early intervention programs to ensure that more than 95% of children with hearing- impairment are in the early intervention system.

In year 3, surveillance data will determine whether hospitals are reaching the desired goal of a false positive screening rate of <3% and a false negative rate of 0%. Year 4 activities include the goal of re-screening of 80% of children referred on the initial screen. In year 5, surveillance will ensure that at least 80% of children referred on a second hearing screen will receive an audiological evaluation by age 3 months.

For more information about the Arkansas program please contact:

Millie Sanford: (501) -661-2328
Mail to: msanford@HEALTHYARKANSAS.COM

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Date: October 27, 2006
Content source: National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities