About Us

Founded in 1998, Midwest Infant Hearing Screening, Inc. was formed by Kathleen J. Casper, after discovering that, at 3 years of age, one of her children had an educationally significant, bilateral hearing loss. During those first few months after his diagnosis, Casper, a nurse since 1983, researched and studied hearing loss in children and was shocked by the statistics:

• Each week in Minnesota, 4 babies are born with a congenital hearing loss.
• 1 of every 1000 babies is born deaf.
• Approximately 3 to 5 of every 1000 children have a mild to moderate hearing loss.

Most appalling was the fact that most children who were born with hearing loss were not diagnosed as hearing impaired until they were nearly 3 years old!

Something needed to be done to reduce the age of identification of children with hearing loss and to help these families. Thus was born Midwest Infant Hearing Screening, Inc.

MIHS, Inc. is a mobile hearing screening service that provides reliable, quality, cost effective hearing screening services to infants and young children born in rural hospitals throughout greater Minnesota and Wisconsin. Since 1998, MIHS, Inc. has expanded to serve the needs of 14 different rural hospitals and clinics in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and continues to offer hearing screening services in their Blaine, Minnesota offices. To date, nearly 5,000 babies and young children have been tested by MIHS, Inc.

Casper has won several awards for her efforts in universal newborn hearing screening, and several newspaper articles have been written about her work. Her efforts were also the subject of a Fox 9 Family Survival Guide story in 1999.

Her awards include the 2000 Distinguished Service Award for outstanding dedication to Universal Newborn Hearing Screening given by the Minnesota Speech-Language-Hearing Association, The 2003 Outstanding Achievement in Universal Infant Hearing Screening Award given by the Minnesota Academy of Audiology, and the 2003 Practicing Entrepreneur Award given by the John M. Morrison Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of St. Thomas.