• Project status: Active
The Anchor Logo

Australian National Child Hearing Health Outcomes Registry

Building on newborn hearing screening success: towards national standards & data management.

Photograph taken by Kieren Topp.

ANCHOR Logomark Primary FullColour

Building on newborn hearing screening success: towards national standards & data management.

Photograph taken by Kieren Topp.

ANCHOR Logomark Primary FullColour

Building on newborn hearing screening success: towards national standards & data management.

Photograph taken by Kieren Topp.

ANCHOR Logomark Primary FullColour

Overview    

Australian children who are born deaf or hard of hearing can have early access to established universal newborn hearing screening (UNHS), diagnosis, device provision, early intervention and medical services.
However, there is no mechanism to measure progress and track outcomes on an individual or population level, nor is there a system to document hearing, health or support needs for children. There is an urgent need to systematically capture data to

  • Ensure the government’s current investments into UNHS and child hearing health interventions are improving outcomes.
  • Address inequity in service access, particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and vulnerable children, to ensure no deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) child ‘slips through the cracks’.
  • Track outcomes of adhoc postnatal screening, responding to the World Health Organization’s recent recommendations.

Our vision is to connect and utilise hearing health information to drive research and service delivery to give all deaf and hard of hearing children the best opportunities to reach their full potentials.

Our aim is to develop the prerequisites for a database for DHH children aged zero to 18 years, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and children from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds in Victoria and Queensland, as a prototype that can be rolled out nationally. Specifically, we intend to:

  1. Find out about Australia’s hearing services and datasets.
  2. Join datasets into a single system (starting in Victoria and Queensland).
  3. Develop a national Core Outcomes Set to measure what matters to Australian children, families and services.
  4. Evaluate the costs and benefits of developing and maintaining ANCHOR.
  5. Begin to address key research questions.

Key research questions

  • Do children with UNHS-detected mild or unilateral hearing losses benefit from amplification or early intervention?
  • Should we re-screen for hearing loss later in childhood?
  • Can we achieve outcomes equity, especially in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and CALD settings?
  • What outcomes matter to Australian children, families, services, and funding agencies?
  • Is a whole-population data system possible?
child in hospital

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