Geographic and Racial Disparities in Infant Hearing Loss.

Objective: Approximately 1 to 2 of every 1000 American newborns has hearing loss identified by newborn screening. This study was designed to determine if infant hearing loss is more common in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities.

Study Design: In this retrospective study, we analyzed electronic medical record data using geostatistical models.

Setting: Infants were residents of Durham County, North Carolina, born in 2 hospitals of the Duke University Health System. This county includes the city of Durham and surrounding suburban and rural communities.

Subjects And Methods: Subjects were hearing-screened newborns, born between 2005 and 2016, whose residential address was in Durham County, North Carolina. This was a retrospective study using medical record data. We used Bayesian regression models with smoothing of coordinate date to identify both spatial and nonspatial predictors of infant hearing loss.

Results: We identified 19,348 infants from Durham County, of whom 675 had failed initial hearing screening and 191 had hearing loss confirmed on follow-up. Hearing loss was significantly associated with minority race (odds ratio [OR], 2.45; 95% confidence interval, 1.97-3.06), as well as lower gestational age and maternal sexually transmitted infections. We identified significant geographic heterogeneity, with a higher probability of hearing loss in poorer urban neighborhoods (local OR range, 0.59-1.39). Neighborhood disadvantage was a significant predictor of hearing loss, as was high local seroprevalence of cytomegalovirus (CMV) among pregnant women.

Conclusions: Urban, low-income neighborhoods have a high prevalence of infant hearing loss compared with more affluent surrounding communities, particularly among minorities. This distribution may be attributable to congenital CMV infection.