Auditory-Verbal International, Inc. (AVI)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Sara Blair Lake, Esq.
Auditory-Verbal International
2121 Eisenhower Avenue, Suite 402
Alexandria, VA 22314
Phone: (703) 739-1049
Fax: (703) 739-0395
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.auditory-verbal.org

Washington, D.C. – March 18, 1999 –Auditory-Verbal International, a worldwide association comprised of physicians, speech language pathologists, audiologists, educators, and deaf and hard of hearing children and their families who have joined together to advocate the choice to listen and speak, strongly endorses the “Newborn and Infant Screening and Intervention Act of 1999”, sponsored by Representative James Walsh (R-NY).

The “Newborn and Infant Screening and Intervention Act of 1999”, directly addresses a critical problem facing infants and young children in our country today: late detection of deafness and hearing loss. This problem is not an insubstantial one. Statistics reveal that as many as one in 1,000 babies is born deaf, and as many as one in 50 infants in a neonatal intensive care unit has significant hearing loss. As late diagnosis of deafness and hearing impairment often results in major delays in a child’s speech and language development, early diagnosis and intervention mitigates the financial, developmental, and emotional costs to a child and his family, and thus benefits society as a whole.

Since its formation in 1987, Auditory-Verbal International has advocated the early detection of hearing impairment in infants and children, and in fact, the first guiding principle of the auditory-verbal approach is the earliest possible identification of hearing impairment in infants and young children, ideally in the newborn nursery, coupled with an aggressive program of audiologic management.