Mere hours after birth, most newborns are tested for two things: whether they have signs of hearing loss and whether they have any of a range of rare conditions that could severely impact their health and their lives.

If they test positive for either, they qualify for a number of interventions that can dramatically improve their prospects over their lifetime.

But both tests could soon undergo dramatic changes because of drastic cutbacks at federal health agencies that public-health advocates say imperil both programs. These cutbacks could mean that certain states will not test for and respond to conditions that currently set services into motion in every state.

“There are a lot of worthy causes that fall by the wayside when there isn’t some kind of centralized government support,” says Karl White, director of the National Center for Hearing Assessment and Management at Utah State University.

The dismantling of a critical division
The Early Hearing Detection and Intervention program (EHDI) is run partially out of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The program helps states coordinate newborn hearing screening and respond to infants who fail the hearing tests. It falls under the CDC’s Disability and Health Promotion branch.

But this entire branch was eliminated in the April 1 cutbacks at CDC that slashed about 2,400 employees. EHDI had eight full-time workers and one fellow; all but one were eliminated in the cutbacks, according to current and former staff.

EHDI worked with states to analyze data to help communities follow up with families so that babies born deaf or hard of hearing get support as early as possible.