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Development Office
Universal Newborn Hearing Screening and Habilitation Program
The universal newborn hearing screening (UNHS) program at Boston Medical Center has been in place since 1996, long before infant
screening was mandated at the federal and state level. All children born at BMC are screened for hearing loss prior to
discharge. Because of BMC’s diverse patient population, a major goal of UNHS staff is to work with parents and break
through language and cultural barriers in order to perform additional testing and treatment once hearing loss has been
identified in a new born. Development of language is time-locked and basically dependent on hearing input during the first
24-36 months of life. Efforts to teach language after this time period are rarely successful. The majority of the children
born at BMC do not have health insurance, fall well below the poverty level for household income, and come from families
struggling with language and cultural barriers. It is not unusual for parents to believe that hearing aids will stigmatize
their children, and thus resist this as an option for treatment, not understanding the full implications of this choice. A
key component of BMC’s UNHS program, therefore, is parent education (including development of educational materials in various
languages) and aggressive follow-up and outreach by BMC staff.
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