Marion Downs

Marion Downs (January 26, 1914 – November 13, 2014) was an American audiologist and professor emerita at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. She pioneered universal newborn hearing screening in the early 1960s and spent over 30 years advocating for its adoption in hospitals, as well as for the provision of hearing aids to infants displaying hearing loss. Her efforts were aimed at raising awareness within the medical community about the developmental challenges associated with childhood deafness. Thanks to her initiatives, 95 percent of newborns born in America today undergo screening for hearing loss. As a result of her efforts, 95 percent of all newborns in America today are screened for hearing loss. She devoted her professional life to the promotion of early identification of hearing loss in newborns, infants, and young children and to helping deaf and hard of hearing individuals lead fulfilling lives.

She was born and raised in New Ulm, Minnesota. After her junior year of college, she married George Downs, PhD, and the couple had three children

Downs attended the University of Minnesota (UM) until 1934, and in 1948 finished her course requirements at the University of Colorado. She received the bachelor's degree in political science and English from UM. In 1949, she enrolled in graduate school at the University of Denver (DU) and received her master's degree in audiology in 1951. She promptly went to work at DU, teaching audiology and directing the audiology clinic from 1951 to 1959. At DU, she supervised a contract with the Veteran's Administration, doing all the veterans' speech pathology, audiology, and hearing aid assessments.

In 1959, she began working as an audiologist in a new ear-nose-and-throat (ENT, or otolaryngology) clinic at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. There, along with Doreen Pollack, she initiated the practice of fitting hearing aids on infants by the age of six months, on the theory that the earlier the remediation and prevention, the better the functioning would be. At the time, most children did not receive hearing aids until two or three years of age. In 1962, she developed an observational test on newborns, which she reported in 1964. Scientific neurological reports confirmed the early remediation theory in the late 1980s and 1990s. Downs worked at the clinic until retiring in 1982. She published two books and over 100 articles on the subject, and lectured and taught extensively throughout the United States and overseas.

In 1969, she proposed that a national committee be established, composed of representatives from professional hearing healthcare organizations, to periodically review and evaluate as well as recommend a "best practices" approach to newborn hearing screening. This led to the formation that year of the National Joint Committee on Infant Hearing, which has provided multidisciplinary leadership and guidance in all areas of newborn and infant hearing issues ever since.

Downs co-authored Hearing in Children (five editions with Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, and sixth edition with Plural Publishing ) with J. L. Northern — textbook for audiology students on how to evaluate and manage children with hearing impairments. The book has been translated into several foreign languages. She also coauthored Auditory Disorders in School Children with R. Roeser (Thieme), now in its fourth edition.

In 2007, Downs published Shut Up and Live! A 93-Year-Old's Guide to Living to a Ripe Old Age, an exhortation for triumphing over age, with the outline: laugh, exercise, love and enjoy sex, rebel against your aches and pains, and live out your passions.