Vohr honored for neonatal-hearing work

PROVIDENCE – Dr. Betty Vohr, director of the Neonatal Follow-Up Program at Women & Infants Hospital and professor of pediatrics at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, was recently awarded the annual Landmark Award of the Section on Perinatal Pediatrics for her efforts in establishing the first Universal Newborn Hearing Screening Program in the United States.

The program has now been replicated across the country as a means of detecting congenital hearing loss as early as possible for auditory intervention to optimize language development in children. Vohr received the award at the annual Section on Perinatal Pediatrics National Conference and Exhibition in San Diego, Calif.

Prior to the establishment of the newborn screening program, screening for hearing impairment in infants and children was done by practitioners in routine physicals. Vohr’s passion to see the process of detection improve drove the acquisition of funding from the Maternal and Child Health and Department of Education to test and study universal newborn hearing screening.

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