BY SEAN LANG, CLINICAL RESEARCH COORDINATOR
Sound helps us connect to the world around us through language, music, and environmental sounds. Hearing loss can limit a person’s access to language and their ability to participate in activities with others. During childhood, hearing loss can pose a particular challenge. Access to sound is crucial for developing the spoken language skills that serve a child for their whole life. With any degree of hearing loss, children often need to work harder than their peers to listen in the classroom and follow along in conversations with friends and family. That extra effort every day can lead children with hearing loss to feel fatigued or even withdraw from others. Because of this, it is important to detect hearing loss, even mild-to-moderate hearing loss, as early as possible and make the appropriate interventions at the right times.
Presently, most childhood hearing loss in the United States is detected early through universal newborn hearing screening. However, early detection is just the first step in addressing childhood hearing loss. Early detection doesn’t always mean early intervention, and early intervention doesn’t always mean appropriate intervention. That is why the House Children’s Hearing Center is designed as a full-service audiology clinic dedicated to providing everything from diagnostics to hearing aids and cochlear implants to family support all in one place, so children can receive the full spectrum of care without delays. With endeavors spearheaded by our newest research scientist, Kelsey Klein, AuD, PhD, the House Institute Foundation is conducting research aimed at better understanding how to optimize our clinical interventions for children with hearing loss.
In November 2024, Dr. Klein partnered with House Children’s Hearing Center to launch a longitudinal study examining the year-after-year impact of hearing loss on many aspects of children’s lives. Many of these outcome areas, like fatigue and mental health, have received little attention in pediatric audiology research, even though they are clearly important to a child’s well-being. Dr. Klein is working to determine how clinical interventions and the timing of those interventions may predict later outcomes for children with hearing loss. As one of the only full-service pediatric audiology clinics in Los Angeles, House Children’s Hearing Center serves children with a vast diversity of language, culture, and hearing loss experiences. This diversity is crucial: by collecting data on a wide range of children, we can be much more confident about generalizing our findings to other children.
Dr. Klein was first drawn to pediatric audiology after seeing how profound an impact audiologists can have on someone’s entire life through timely and appropriate intervention during childhood. Meanwhile, the dual nature of her degrees, both clinical and research-focused, emphasized the importance of the symbiotic relationship between research and clinical care in improving patient outcomes. At the House Institute Foundation, we are excited to apply Dr. Klein’s expertise to learn how we can best support children with hearing loss in all aspects of their lives, from infancy to adulthood.
For more information about current research projects, visit HIFLA.org/research.