This initiative will expand on the Maternal Child Health Bureau’s (MCHB) and the National Initiative for Children’s Healthcare Quality’s (NICHQ) previous work addressing the health care needs of CYSCHN and their families by enhancing capacity within State Title V programs and the health care delivery system.
The goal of this initiative is to improve short and long term outcomes for infants with hearing loss and their families. The focus will be on improving the systems of care for follow up to the newborn screening process. The initiative will focus on strengthening the links between the several components of follow up to newborn hearing screening—definitive diagnosis, early interventions, entry into appropriate care and services, and connection to a Medical Home. The latter of these will be a major focus of this initiative. Specific methods used are:
- defining the specific change concepts that apply to the integration of children identified by hearing screening into a medical home;
- placing these specific concepts in the context of the general change concepts that drive medical home implementation; and
- testing these through a learning collaborative involving state teams with representatives from Title V, state screening programs, specialty care (audiologists, ENT/ORL), early intervention, and primary care practice teams.
