Community Corner

Regent Square Woman Spreads Hearing Health Awareness

Deborah DeFazio wants her neighbors to have more access to hearing health aides and support.

When Deborah DeFazio discovered that her infant daughter was profoundly deaf, she did everything a parent would do to provide the tools necessary to create the best life she could for her baby.

Now the finance director of the Center for Hearing and Deaf Services in Uptown, DeFazio of Regent Square is proud to say her daughter is now 31 and travelling the world.

“It was really great to find two great resources in our own backyard with the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, which was the educational aspect and then the center, which is now in its 90th year,” DeFazio said.

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When her daughter Lisa was six months old, she started to see the signs that she may have hearing problems. She went to the Center for Hearing and Deaf Services and received a body aide that could help her young daughter to hear and learn in a much more efficient way.

DeFazio said she wants to inspire people to initiate more conversations about hearing across the ages and situations. While people have vision health problems, DeFazio said you never question why people wear glasses. Yet, when people saw her daughter with a body aide and ear buds, they would ask, “Is she listening to the radio?”

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“People tend to ignore hearing,” DeFazio said. “People will ignore hearing health and there are devices people can have to make their lives easier, to make them safe and those devices are readily available. The great thing is we have this resource, which is 10 minutes away.”

The Center for Hearing and Deaf Services provides specialized technological devices for people who are hard of hearing, such as body and hearing aides, an audiology program and more support for varying degrees of hearing difficulties.

DeFazio started volunteering at the center about six years ago and also is on the board of directors. When the finance director stepped down, DeFazio said her background of being a CPA was a natural asset and she decided to take the position.

“Obviously, for personal reasons, it is simple to me that other deaf individuals and people who are hard of hearing should have the same resources and opportunities that my daughter had,” DeFazio said. “A very large part of the services are interpreting services, an audiology program and as we all have aging parents and today’s youth needs to think about hearing with environmental damage and constantly having ear buds in at a high frequency. We really need to be educated about that because once you lose your hearing, you can’t get it back.”

Lisa graduated from Woodland Hills High School after she was placed in the mainstream program. She began her schooling at the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf. She later graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology and now has a master’s degree in international development from Galadet University in Washington, D.C., a liberal arts university for the deaf.


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