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Projects

Family Language Planning and Language Acquisition Among deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) Children

Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) children are at risk of delayed language acquisition due to limited auditory access to spoken language and limited exposure to signed languages such as American Sign Language (ASL). Early language access is crucial for healthy neurodevelopment, so families must make language planning decisions quickly. This research project aims to document family language planning, participation in early interventions, and identify health and demographic disparities as it relates to accessing interventions. Our overall objective is to document the family language planning process, types of interventions DHH children receive, and identify how language planning and interventions relate to language outcomes.

Deaf Equity in Behavioral Health Assessments

The goal of this project is to assess the quality of the translation of an ASL behavioral health assessment toolkit including the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9),1 P4 Suicidality Screener (P4),2 Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 scale (GAD-7),3 Deaf Acculturation Scale (DAS),4 and Multidimensional Inventory of Deaf Acculturative Stress (MIDAS).5 These measures will be formally translated in collaboration with the translation track team at the Deaf Resilience Center at Gallaudet University led by Lori Day, director of the Deaf Resilience Center, and Patrick Boudreault, the translation track team leader. We will follow the World Health Organization’s Minority Language Translation Guidelines.6 Following the initial translation, we will assess the quality of the translations through an expert review panel and cognitive interviews with Deaf community members. We will use the data collected from the expert review panel and the cognitive interviews to iteratively refine the ASL translations.

Deaf Cultural Concepts of Distress

The overall goal of this pilot project is to identify cultural concepts of distress for Deaf people. While extensively studied in other groups, this has yet to be explored with Deaf signers who are part of a sociolinguistic cultural group. The DSM-5 defines cultural concepts of distress as “the ways that cultural groups experience, understand, and communicate suffering, behavioral problems, or troubling thoughts and emotions” (p. 758). The Deaf cultural community likely has unique ways of experiencing, understanding, and communicating about mental health problems that influence their experiences and responsiveness to treatment. Exploring cultural concepts of distress is important among this underserved population to address current mental health disparities.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing Child Resilience Center: Child Language Experience

Mental health resources should be fully accessible, especially for children. The Deaf and Hard of Hearing Child Resilience Center at Gallaudet University is conducting a vital study to enhance mental health support for Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) people by translating key mental health screening tools into standardized ASL versions.

Wilmot Future Deaf Scientists Program

For four years, the Wilmot Cancer Institute has run a summer internship program, the Wilmot Future Deaf Scientists Program, to expose local Deaf high school students to cancer-related healthcare and research careers they might not otherwise consider. With support from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), Wilmot will expand that program to provide science education internship opportunities to Deaf high school students at four partner sites across the U.S.

Read more about the program expansion.