CIICA at ACIA in Boston
The American CI Alliance held their 2025 Conference in Boston – with over 1000 delegates and a great atmosphere with the opportunity to share and have discussion time.
The themes of CI2025 Boston included:
• Cochlear implant candidacy and outcomes in asymmetric hearing loss
• What can be done to improve CI access to underserved paediatric and adult populations
• Maximizing CI outcomes at both ends of the age spectrum
• Accessibility for cochlear implant and hearing aid users to other technologies
• The future of gene therapy for children and adults with hearing loss
• Cochlear implants in the hearing health continuum: the US and around the world
• Access to hearing health by children with congenital CMV
• Listening, Language, Literacy in children with hearing loss
Andrea Warner Cryz welcomed everyone, and introduced Lexi Finnigan and her great plans to connect Teens with CI across the US. She is keen to be involved with the CIICA group.
At the beginning Bruce Gantz, MD, Iowa, was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award for his outstanding contribution to the field, and was followed by Nancy Young, MD, Chicago, introduced by Donna Sorkin, Chief Executive, who gave the John Niparko Memorial Lecture on “Language Prediction to Improve Outcomes for Children with CI”.
There were some interesting features- quick poster presentations followed by the poster sessions, and Sue Archbold presented on CI Services Matter, CIICA’s report on adult ci services. Other interesting features were lunchtime discussions and Sue Archbold and Connie Mayer attended the one on Educational Issues. Forty people turned up and all recognized the importance of education for children with CI, and heard about the teachers of the deaf working on CI teams in the UK and the important educational data which is collected to provide evidence. They were interested in CIICA’s developing Conversations on Education.
Sue Archbold was on a panel on Global Healthcare and Cochlear Implant Access: Systems, Policies and Practices around the World, chaired by James Saunders. She made the point that you could achieve policy change, but unless practice changed they were not important. She quoted from Carolina Der, WHO: it begins with Awareness:
No Awareness, no information , no demand and no service
With the EDHI programme (Early Detection) having been scrapped in the US there is certainly plenty for the strong Advocacy of ACIA to address.
Next year will be in Chicago!
