Grant supports childhood hearing loss research
To date, most research on childhood hearing loss has focused on severe to profound hearing loss that constitutes deafness. But a five-year, $8.9 million grant to the University of Iowa from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, part of the National Institutes of Health, will help further research on milder hearing loss in preschool children.
The grant will help UI researchers, along with colleagues at Boys Town National Research Hospital in Nebraska and the University of North Carolina, explore whether educational and audiological services and aids can improve outcomes for young children with mild and moderate hearing disorders.
“It’s obviously been very important to study the communication challenges faced by children who are deaf and determine how to help them gain communication skills. However, much less is known about the impact of milder forms of hearing loss on children’s ability to communicate, succeed in school, and have good social and psychological development,” said explained the grant’s principal investigator Dr. J. Bruce Tomblin, UI professor of communication sciences and disorders in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
In addition to Tomblin, who also holds the D.C. Spriesterbach Distinguished Professorship of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dr. Mary Pat Moeller, director of childhood deafness at Boys Town National Research Hospital, is serving as the study’s co-principal investigator.
UI researchers involved in the study are Drs. Lenore Holte, UI clinical professor with the Center for Disabilities and Development; John Knutson, UI professor of psychology; Ruth Bentler, UI professor of communication sciences and disorders; Sandie Bass-Ringdahl, UI assistant professor of communication sciences and disorders; Jake Oleson, UI assistant professor of biostatistics, and Jane Pendergast, UI professor of biostatistics.