19th ANNUAL EARLY HEARING DETECTION & INTERVENTION MEETING
March 8-10, 2020 • Kansas City, MO
Award Winners 2011
2011 Award Winner
Congratulations to Jean Johnson! The 2011 winner of the Antonia Brancia Maxon Award for EHDI Excellence
Jean Johnson
Jean L. Johnson's career spans four decades, focusing throughout on all aspects of EHDI - early, hearing, detection, and intervention. Jean's first degrees were in Deaf Education and Audiology, later augmented with a master's and a doctorate in Public Health. Jean served the people of Guam as a clinician and chief public health officer, then the children of Hawaii as Project Coordinator of the Zero-to-Three Hawai'i Project. In that role Jean directed the statewide project to plan and implement early intervention services for infants, toddlers and their families. She worked with the Hawai'i Early Intervention Coordinating Council to develop policies for the provision of services and projections of cost and methods of financing such services. She drafted legislation for mandating early intervention services for the state and drafted the first state mandate for newborn hearing screening. In her current position with the Center on Disability Studies at the University of Hawaii, she continues to obtain competitive federal grants for special projects and administers and monitors grant performance. Across the decades, Jean has been honored with awards for Outstanding Services to the People of Guam, Outstanding Contributions to Early Intervention Services in the State of Hawaii and the Nation, advocacy for children and youth, advocacy for persons with disability, and many other awards including humanitarian and leadership awards from a variety of organizations. Jean began publishing her work in the 1980s and continues into the present.
Beyond the sheer scope of her achievements, I'd like to speak to some of Jean's qualities that make her contributions "excellent." I had the privilege of meeting Jean in 2000 and working with her for about 5 years when she was the Prinicipal Investigator of a multi-center grant from the Association for Teachers of Preventive Medicine through the Centers for Disease Control. This time period is relatively brief in the span of her extensive career, but I am confident that my observations and experiences represent those of others. Jean surrounded herself with people who had skills or expertise she did not, thus assembling a team with multiple skills. Through telephone conference calls, email, and only an occasional meetings, she delegated work appropriately. She was organized and efficient. She was energetic and assertive - without being pushy. She made the most out of the project, presenting the data to a variety of different disciplines at 8 meetings in the United States, Europe and Asia. The project resulted in 5 publications and Jean recognized everyone's contribution with a list of authors that filled the title pages.
On a personal note, Jean encouraged all of us to follow her lead. She promoted younger people in the field through successful nomination of awards for their work. She befriended new colleagues by inviting them to her home and continued to support and encourage them. Because of Jean Johnson, many others of us have made contributions to EHDI that would not have happened otherwise.