Communication Sciences & Disorders
Special Olympics - Healthy Hearing
The UGA Speech and Hearing Clinic provides hearing screenings for the Georgia Special Olympics Winter Games in January every year. Holly Kaplan, PhD, CCC-A, UGA Clinical Audiologist, serves as the Healthy Hearing Coordinator for Georgia. Hearing screenings, consisting of otoscopic checks, tympanometry, otoacoustic emissions, and puretone testing, are available as part of a total health screening program entitled "Healthy Athletes."
The mission of the Healthy Athletes program is to improve each athlete's ability to train and compete in Special Olympics. Screenings are provided for vision, dental, and hearing with results being given to each athlete and medical referrals being made as necessary. Funding for the program is provided from a variety of national and international grant sources and in-kind contributions from audiometric equipment manufacturers. Trained volunteers (UGA graduate students in Speech-Language Pathology) supervised by licensed, certified practitioners provide the screenings for up to 200 athletes, coaches, and family members.
The Georgia Winter Games involve athletes from all over the state. Participants compete in several skill levels of basketball, bowling, floor hockey, roller-skating, ice-skating, and rhythm gymnastics.
The UGA Speech and Hearing Clinic is honored to be invited to participate in this effort. Not only do Georgia's Special Olympians benefit from identification of possible health needs, the University is able to provide its students with an excellent clinical practicum in identifying the hearing health needs of Georgians with developmental disabilities.
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