Annual Accomplishments

Every year, we strive to be better than the year before.

In 2010...

Our clinician, Stacy Claycomb, Audiologist and her crew of amazing Newborn Hearing Screening volunteers tested the hearing of approximately 3,000 babies at birth at University of Colorado Hospital.

We received 800 hours of volunteer support which is worth almost $17,000 of service!

Nearly one hundred teenagers participated in our Teen Program, receiving crucial information on self-advocacy skills, community resources, and hearing technology, all designed to promote a successful transition from graduating high school to starting college or employment.

After five years of planning and fundraising, eight children successfully completed the first class of Marion's Way, our diagnostic preschool program during June and July of 2010.

Over fifty families benefitted from our loaner hearing aid bank, borrowing hearing technology while waiting for repairs, trying new hearing aids, or accessing financial assistance to purchase aids.

Three of our clinicians advanced their education and professional expertise: Ronald Olson earned his AuD, Melinda Anderson earned her PhD, and Tammy Frederickson earned her PhD.

Forty-two individuals received cochlear implants in 2010, providing them more access to sound and communication.

Eighty-five parents, teachers, teenagers, paraprofessionals, and some of the general public went through our Sign Language Program, improving their skills and understanding of the language.

MDHC received approval on the schematic design for the Marion Downs Hearing Center building, allowing us to move forward with our capital campaign to raise funding for the eventual completion of the design and construction of the new Center.

Sandra Gabbard, PhD, Herman Jenkins, MD and Christine Yoshinaga-Itano, PhD, were invited to present as professional speakers at the Hearing International Conference and the Shanghai Otology and Audiology Conference in Shanghai, China in October. Drs. Gabbard and Yoshinaga-Itano also traveled to Louyang China to work with audiologists, physicians, teachers and parents in an effort to improve services to deaf and hard-of-hearing children in the Louyang region.

Kristin Uhler, PhD's research was accepted for publication in Journal of the American Academy of Audiology . Her work involves speech perception in infants with cochlear implants. Kristin is a research audiologist with MDHC.

One of our audiologists, Melinda Anderson's, research was accepted for publication in Ear and Hearing and in the International Journal of Audiology. Her work involves sound quality perception in listeners with typical hearing and in listeners with hearing loss, using different types of hearing aid digital signal processing strategies. (Arehart, K, Kates, J., and Anderson, M. (2010) Effects of noise, nonlinear processing, and linear filtering on perceived speech quality. Ear and Hearing, 31, 420-436.)

The Colorado Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing awarded the MDHC a $5,000 grant to expand our Teen Program, Connect and Grow! These funds will allow us to expand our program to include an overnight experience on a Colorado-based college campus for ten teenagers from throughout the state.