Audiology LEND Report
JFK Partners
University of Colorado
December 18th, 2015
Examples of audiology trainees making an impact on their communities:
Dr. Reaghan Albert is a pediatric audiologist at Children’s Mercer Hospital in Kansas City, MO. She currently works on a number of multidisciplinary teams, including cleft palate, auto digestive tract, down syndrome, SAFE clinic (non accidental trauma clinic), turner syndrome, and oncology follow up. She works with multiple specialists on a regular basis and provides a wide range of diagnostic and treatment services with infants and children of all ages. She was pre-doc LEND trainee 2013-2014.
Dr. Chandace Jeep is an audiologist in a private practice, Animas Valley Audiology in Durango, Colorado. Dr. Jeep provides services to children in a four state regional area serving rural communities in southwest Colorado, northwest New Mexico, northwest Arizona, and southeast Utah. Dr. Jeep is the only audiologist providing both diagnostic and amplification services and receives referrals from many medical practices, the regional hospital and the local school districts. Dr. Jeep was a post-doc LEND trainee in 2010-2011.
Examples of how Audiology faculty and trainees are addressing public health or life course issues:
LEND Audiology faculty and students are working on data management systems both in the state of Colorado as well as nationally in other states, particularly related to adding developmental outcomes to EHDI data systems and developing systems capable of collecting this data. There is a particular focus of one of the students on outcomes of children in Spanish-speaking homes, and several students are working on the development of technology to implement, system-wide, a standard protocol for assessing speech discrimination in infants and toddlers. One focus of the research has been on the relationship between meeting 1-3-6, screening by one month, identification by 3 months and intervention by 6 months and developmental outcomes.
LEND trainees have actively participated in the Colorado EHDI Advisory facilitated by the Colorado Department of Health. They attend meeting and have participated on committees to gather information on the needs of the EHDI system in Colorado.
Testimonials about the impact of LEND from former trainees:
Dr. Reaghan Albert, “My current job requires that I work in many multidisciplinary clinics. I feel very comfortable in this environment because of my LEND fellowship. My LEND fellowship facilitated interaction with outside specialists during my 4th year externship which prepared me to use an effective team approach. I feel that this is critical when working with children who have autism or other diagnosis which is a lot of what I see every day. I also feel more comfortable working with families with children who have more than one diagnosis. I did not receive this training from my graduate program nor would I had I done a 4th year at a non-LEND site. The experience I had with LEND gave me the tools I need to work with not only children with hearing loss but also with children with multiple disabilities”
Dr. Chandace Jeep, “LEND enabled me to have access to a team of pediatric specialists so I could not only collaborate, but most importantly learn from them. Direct interaction through a team approach in my own rural clinic in Colorado was the critical element that helped me develop a pediatric specialty in Audiology, but would not have been possible without the funding from LEND. Over the course of three years, I was given access to supervision in my clinic over me per my request and guidance with diagnostic evaluations and hearing aid fittings on newborns, infants, toddlers, and young children that was not part of my doctoral program. We transitioned from me observing the specialist, to us working together side by side with families, to the specialist supervising me until we both felt confident that the services I was providing would sustain our rural community. Prior to this, many families were told they must drive to Denver for care, and unfortunately, being 7 hours away, this was not always an option for young families. The age of identification and the quality of coordination of early intervention services for our Deaf and hard of hearing children in our community is now timely and kept local, thanks the LEND. I highly recommend the LEND training for other post- graduate professionals and appreciate the support it gave me and my private practice.”