About Us

EarWorm: Dialogues on hearing health you can’t stop thinking about is a podcast produced by the National Center for Hearing Assessment and Management (NCHAM - pronounced "en-cham") at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. The mission of NCHAM is to ensure that all infants and young children with hearing loss are identified as early as possible and have access to timely and appropriate audiological, educational, medical intervention, and family support services. Permanent sensori-neural hearing loss is the most common birth anomoly in the United States. Approximately 3 infants in every 1000 are born deaf or hard-of-hearing. Most newborns in the U.S. are now screened for hearing loss using evidence-based methods, usually before even leaving the hospital. Screening at the newborn period isn’t enough, however. Monitoring the status of hearing throughout early childhood is important because hearing loss can occur at any time as a result of illness, physical trauma, or environmental or genetic factors. In fact, research suggests that the incidence of permanent hearing loss doubles between birth and school age; from the 3 children in 1,000 at birth to about 6 in a thousand by the time children enter school. The growing numbers of children being documented with late identified hearing loss reinforce the need for systemic improvements so that when a change in hearing status does occur, it is readily identified and does not lead to disruptions in a child’s access to language or cause delays in other areas of development or educational achievement.

The EarWorm podcast features conversations with a wide array of professionals, parents and other family members whose experiences, ideas, curiosities and activities are committed to ensuring that all children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can thrive. Whether highlighting scientific advances that can help in early identification or in the treatment of hearing loss, emerging techniques for the prevention of hearing loss or innovative practices for ensuring families and children have access to the most effective intervention and support strategies, EarWorm is intended to get us all thinking and acting in new and more generative ways. We hope you will join us for EarWorm, dialogues on hearing health you can’t stop thinking about.

William Eiserman

Dr. William Eiserman is the host of EarWorm and is the Associate Director of the National Center for Hearing Assessment and Management and Co-Principal Investigator on the Early Hearing Detection and Intervention - National Technical Resource Center. From 2001-2020, Dr. Eiserman led a nationwide effort called the Early Childhood Hearing Outreach (ECHO) Initiative assisting Early, Migrant, and American Indian/Alaska Native Head Start programs in developing evidence-based hearing screening and follow-up practices. Working in close collaboration with a team of pediatric audiologists and other EHDI experts, Dr. Eiserman was responsible for the design of training systems, mechanism for tracking and follow-up, and evaluation strategies associated with early and continuous hearing screening activities. Dr. Eiserman has had extensive international and cross-cultural experience including work in Kenya, Ecuador, Vietnam, Costa Rica, Russia and Indonesia. In 1989-90 Dr. Eiserman was a Fulbright Scholar to Indonesia where he taught qualitative research and evaluation methods and assisted in the development of an organization providing medical care to children with craniofacial disfigurement- an area to which he remains committed outside of his current professional activities. In his leisure time, Dr. Eiserman enjoys hiking, music, photography and performing improvisational comedy.

The National Center for Hearing Assessment and Management (NCHAM) is one of many research centers located at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. The mission of NCHAM is to ensure that all infants and young children with hearing loss are identified as early as possible and have access to timely and appropriate audiological, educational, medical intervention, and family support services. NCHAM receives funding from multiple sources to conduct research, training, and technical assistance activities to support and improve newborn and early childhood hearing screening, diagnosis, and early intervention. NCHAM has served as the Early Hearing Detection and Intervention National Technical Resource Center (EHDI NTRC) for many years. The work of the EHDI-NTRC has been funded in part by a cooperative agreement (U52MC04391) from the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) at the United States Department of Health and Human Services. Any views, thoughts and opinions expressed by participants in EarWorm are solely that of the participants and no endorsement by NCHAM, USU, or MCHB/HRSA is implied or expressed.