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8/11 — Hearing Helpers
New nonprofit aims to give cochlear implants to impoverished youth
by Kristine Goodrich
Staff Writer
WHITE BEAR TOWNSHIP — It will take 467 music lovers to help a Honduran boy hear music for the first time.
Formed last year, the White Bear Township-based Help Me Hear Foundation is holding its first fundraiser — a concert featuring seven Twin Cities area bands that are donating their talents.
At $15 per ticket, the foundation needs 467 attendees to raise the $7,000 needed to give a cochlear implant to an 8-year-old boy named Erickson (last name not disclosed).
The new nonprofit’s mission is to fund cochlear implants — a device surgically implanted in the ear that provides a sense of sound to someone who is deaf or hearing impaired — for children in developing countries.
Such implants and follow-up therapy costs, most of which are covered by insurance and government subsidies, range anywhere from $60,000 to $100,000 in the U.S., according to Help Me Hear Foundation Executive Director Brent Lucas.
With help from surgeons and hospitals donating their services, the foundation has determined it can do the same surgery and therapy in Third World countries, where insurance and government help isn’t available, for approximately $7,000.
Erickson, who has been deaf since birth, is set to receive the organization’s first implant sometime this fall. The surgery is being performed by Dr. Pedro Albernaz in Brazil.
After it’s complete, Erickson not only will hear, he also will go to school for the first time. With no special education services, most deaf children in such countries aren’t allowed an education, according to the foundation leaders.
“These implants are a miracle ... This technology allows them to live normal lives,” said Rochelle Amann, foundation board vice president.
Lucas and Amann, both of St. Paul, founded the nonprofit last spring. At the time, they were colleagues at Envoy Medical Corporation, a Minnesota company which makes a hearing aid implant (not cochlear implants; the foundation doesn’t purchase anything from the corporation).
Their work with people suffering hearing impairments, and the doctors who treat them, inspired them to start a hearing-related foundation, they said. There already were many organizations, such as the Starkey Hearing Foundation, providing traditional hearing aids. So the pair chose to focus their efforts on cochlear implants for children for whom the traditional aids don’t work.
“We’re doing something that’s ... going to have a lasting impact, something that’s going to help society in a very substantial way,” said Lucas, 26, a North Oaks native who’s attending Hamline University School of Law.
According to a Johns Hopkins University study, every child with profound deafness costs society more than $1 million in increased education costs and lost productivity.
“Cochlear implants in profoundly deaf children have a positive effect on quality of life, at reasonable direct costs, and appear to result in a net saving to society,” the researchers wrote.
Thus the founders had little trouble gaining prominent community members to join their board — including US Bank executive David Peterson and basketball legend and North Oaks resident Kevin McHale. The fifth board member is Dr. William House, internationally renowned as the pioneer of the cochlear implant.
The group spent its initial months establishing itself as a tax deductible charity, developing partnerships, promoting itself and securing some primary contributors, according to Lucas. Now it will begin facilitating the implants - hopefully another five or six in addition to Erickson’s by year’s end, Lucas said.
The foundation is also working with a doctor in North Carolina to coordinate a contingent of U.S. doctors to travel to Israel and Palestine to perform several implants.
For more information about the organization, which has an office on White Bear Parkway, visit www.helpmehearfoundation.org or call 651-361-8073.
•Benefit concert
When: Aug. 22. Doors open at 8 p.m. Bands start at 9 p.m.
Where: Fine Line Music Cafe, 318 First Avenue N., Minneapolis.
Performers: The Abdomen, Linden, Breanne Duren, Jamestown Story, The Voice of Sleep, Alicia Wiley and Danielle Thrus.
Tickets: $15. Advance purchase preferred. Call 651-361-8073 or e-mail info@helpmehearfoundation.org. Tickets also will be available at the door.
•What is a cochlear implant?
It’s a small, electronic device that can help provide a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard-of-hearing. The implant consists of an external portion behind the ear and a second portion that is surgically placed under the skin.
The device includes a microphone, a speech processor that selects and arranges sounds picked up by the microphone, a transmitter that receives signals from the speech processor and converts them into electric impulses, and a group of electrodes that collect the impulses from the stimulator and send them to the auditory nerve.
Source: National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders
Kristine Goodrich can be reached at 651-407-1233 or vadnaisheightsnews@presspubs.com.
Formed last year, the White Bear Township-based Help Me Hear Foundation is holding its first fundraiser — a concert featuring seven Twin Cities area bands that are donating their talents.
At $15 per ticket, the foundation needs 467 attendees to raise the $7,000 needed to give a cochlear implant to an 8-year-old boy named Erickson (last name not disclosed).
The new nonprofit’s mission is to fund cochlear implants — a device surgically implanted in the ear that provides a sense of sound to someone who is deaf or hearing impaired — for children in developing countries.
Such implants and follow-up therapy costs, most of which are covered by insurance and government subsidies, range anywhere from $60,000 to $100,000 in the U.S., according to Help Me Hear Foundation Executive Director Brent Lucas.
With help from surgeons and hospitals donating their services, the foundation has determined it can do the same surgery and therapy in Third World countries, where insurance and government help isn’t available, for approximately $7,000.
Erickson, who has been deaf since birth, is set to receive the organization’s first implant sometime this fall. The surgery is being performed by Dr. Pedro Albernaz in Brazil.
After it’s complete, Erickson not only will hear, he also will go to school for the first time. With no special education services, most deaf children in such countries aren’t allowed an education, according to the foundation leaders.
“These implants are a miracle ... This technology allows them to live normal lives,” said Rochelle Amann, foundation board vice president.
Lucas and Amann, both of St. Paul, founded the nonprofit last spring. At the time, they were colleagues at Envoy Medical Corporation, a Minnesota company which makes a hearing aid implant (not cochlear implants; the foundation doesn’t purchase anything from the corporation).
Their work with people suffering hearing impairments, and the doctors who treat them, inspired them to start a hearing-related foundation, they said. There already were many organizations, such as the Starkey Hearing Foundation, providing traditional hearing aids. So the pair chose to focus their efforts on cochlear implants for children for whom the traditional aids don’t work.
“We’re doing something that’s ... going to have a lasting impact, something that’s going to help society in a very substantial way,” said Lucas, 26, a North Oaks native who’s attending Hamline University School of Law.
According to a Johns Hopkins University study, every child with profound deafness costs society more than $1 million in increased education costs and lost productivity.
“Cochlear implants in profoundly deaf children have a positive effect on quality of life, at reasonable direct costs, and appear to result in a net saving to society,” the researchers wrote.
Thus the founders had little trouble gaining prominent community members to join their board — including US Bank executive David Peterson and basketball legend and North Oaks resident Kevin McHale. The fifth board member is Dr. William House, internationally renowned as the pioneer of the cochlear implant.
The group spent its initial months establishing itself as a tax deductible charity, developing partnerships, promoting itself and securing some primary contributors, according to Lucas. Now it will begin facilitating the implants - hopefully another five or six in addition to Erickson’s by year’s end, Lucas said.
The foundation is also working with a doctor in North Carolina to coordinate a contingent of U.S. doctors to travel to Israel and Palestine to perform several implants.
For more information about the organization, which has an office on White Bear Parkway, visit www.helpmehearfoundation.org or call 651-361-8073.
•Benefit concert
When: Aug. 22. Doors open at 8 p.m. Bands start at 9 p.m.
Where: Fine Line Music Cafe, 318 First Avenue N., Minneapolis.
Performers: The Abdomen, Linden, Breanne Duren, Jamestown Story, The Voice of Sleep, Alicia Wiley and Danielle Thrus.
Tickets: $15. Advance purchase preferred. Call 651-361-8073 or e-mail info@helpmehearfoundation.org. Tickets also will be available at the door.
•What is a cochlear implant?
It’s a small, electronic device that can help provide a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard-of-hearing. The implant consists of an external portion behind the ear and a second portion that is surgically placed under the skin.
The device includes a microphone, a speech processor that selects and arranges sounds picked up by the microphone, a transmitter that receives signals from the speech processor and converts them into electric impulses, and a group of electrodes that collect the impulses from the stimulator and send them to the auditory nerve.
Source: National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders
Kristine Goodrich can be reached at 651-407-1233 or vadnaisheightsnews@presspubs.com.
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