Community Health Worker Intervention for Newborns Not Passing Initial Universal Hearing Screening

Area of Science:

• Pediatrics
• Public Health
• Audiology

Background:

• Universal newborn hearing screening (UNHS) effectively identifies infants with potential hearing loss (HL).
• Improving outpatient follow-up adherence for referred newborns is crucial for timely intervention.
• Community health worker (CHW) interventions show promise in addressing this follow-up gap.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the efficacy of a CHW intervention in increasing adherence to outpatient rescreening for newborns referred from UNHS.
• To assess the impact of CHW outreach on follow-up completion rates and timeliness.

Main Methods:

• A mixed prospective-retrospective cohort study compared newborns with and without CHW intervention.
• CHWs provided education on HL and follow-up importance to caregivers of referred newborns.
• Statistical analyses included Chi-square tests, t-tests, and regression models.

Main Results:

• Newborns in the CHW intervention group showed significantly higher follow-up rescreening completion rates (79.5%) compared to the control group (71.4%) (P=.031).
• The CHW intervention resulted in a statistically significant increase in adherence (OR=1.55, P=.04).
• No significant difference was observed in the average time to follow-up between the groups (P=.449).

Conclusions:

• CHW outreach intervention can effectively increase adherence to recommended outpatient follow-up rescreening after initial UNHS.
• Integrating CHWs into nursery teams may improve the completion rates of essential follow-up hearing screens for newborns.
• This strategy supports early identification and management of hearing loss in infants.