Christine Yoshinaga-Itano is Professor Emerita inf the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Research Professor in the Institute of Cognitive Science and a faculty member in the Centre for Neurosciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She also holds an adjunct appointment in the Department of Otolaryngology and Audiology at the University of Colorado, Denver and Visiting Professorships at the Centre for Deaf Studies, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, and the Department of Human Sciences at the University of Verona, Italy.
Since the 1980s Professor Yoshinaga-Itano has conducted research into the language, speech, and social-emotional development of deaf and hard-of-hearing infants and children. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Office of Education, Maternal and Child Health, the Centre for Disease Control, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, the Colorado Department of Education, and the University of Colorado.
Professor Yoshinaga-Itano’s work has focused on the impact of early-identification and early intervention on the developmental outcomes of children with significant hearing loss. She and her colleagues were the first to demonstrate that, when infants with significant congenital hearing loss are identified in the first few months of life and provided with appropriate intervention services, 80% of children with significant hearing loss and no additional disabilities can maintain age-appropriate language development and intelligible speech in the first five years of life. As a result of this research, universal newborn hearing screening programs were implemented in the United States. That evidence was instrumental in making the case for the introduction of UNHS programs in many other countries—including Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Poland, and Brazil.
Professor Yoshinaga-Itano’s early research demonstrated that it was critical that identification of hearing loss and early intervention occur within the first six months of life to maintain language development outcomes that are commensurate with those of children with normal hearing. She has also undertaken extensive research into the developmental outcomes of infants, toddlers, and children with hearing loss in non-English speaking homes.