WA State EHDDI Learning Community Winter 2025 Webinar

Title: Shoot for the Moon! Best Practices to Optimize Outcomes of Children with Hearing Loss

Description:

This presentation will review some of the landmark research studies, developments, initiatives, and innovations that have advanced auditory, speech, language, and literacy outcomes of children with hearing loss over the past 25 years. A focus will be placed on evidence-based clinical practices and protocols that have had the most significant impact on the outcomes of children with hearing loss. Additionally, this presentation will review some of the most significant barriers that currently impede children with hearing loss from reaching their full potential and will identify potential solutions or developments that might address these barriers.

Presenters: René Gifford & Sara Neumann

René Gifford, PhD, is Chief of Audiology and Research at Hearts for Hearing in Oklahoma City. Prior to her arrival at Hearts for Hearing in 2025, she served as a tenured Professor of Hearing and Speech Sciences at Vanderbilt University for 14 years as well as Director of the Cochlear Implant Programs at Vanderbilt (2011-2022) and Mayo Clinic (2006-2010). Her research has been NIH funded for over 20 years and focuses on combined electric and acoustic stimulation (EAS) with particular emphasis on speech & music perception, spatial hearing, and development of speech, language, and literacy for children with hearing loss. She has authored over 170 peer-reviewed publications, two books, and multiple book chapters in the field of cochlear implants and auditory (re)habilitation.

Dr. Gifford has been recognized with various awards for her contributions to audiology and hearing science including the 2015 Louis M. DiCarlo Award for Recent Clinical Achievement from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, the 2021 Jerger Career Award for Research in Audiology from the American Academy of Audiology, and she was a featured scientist on the National Public Radio, Science Friday broadcast entitled Breakthrough: Portraits of Women in Science—Hearing a Whole New World. She is actively involved in clinical care, research, and the training of audiologists and hearing scientists.

Sara Neumann, Au.D., is a clinical and research audiologist and the Audiology Research Manager at Hearts for Hearing in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She specializes in pediatric audiology and cochlear implants and conducts research studies evaluating clinically relevant outcomes with hearing aids, cochlear implants, and remote microphone technology, and treatment for single sided deafness.  She has co-authored several articles and textbook chapters with Dr. Jace Wolfe on pediatric amplification, implantable hearing devices, and cochlear implant programming. Dr. Neumann is also an adjunct professor at the University of Oklahoma and co-teaches a module on Assistive Technology and Collaborative Care for the Institute for Cochlear Implant Training’s Advanced Audiology Course. She has a B.S. in Deaf Education from Northern Illinois University (2003), working as a deaf educator for six years in both a self-contained classroom, as an itinerant teacher, and as a Developmental Therapist-Hearing for deaf and hard of hearing children, ages 0-3, in Illinois prior to returning to school to study Audiology. She obtained her Doctorate of Audiology (Au.D.) from Illinois State University. She has been at Hearts for Hearing since 2012 and the Audiology Research Manager since 2018.

Disclosure: René Gifford and Sara Neumann have no financial on non-financial conflicts of interest in relation to this presentation. The WSELC webinar is funded by the Washington State Department of Health EHDDI program; presenters receive an honorarium from WSELC.

Continuing Education hours are available for live participation in this webinar: both ASHA CEUs and OSPI CECH hours are available if requested in your registration.

ASL interpretation is provided.

A recorded version of the webinar will be available within a few days after the live event.

?Questions: contact wselc@uw.edu