Jean Johnson
Vice-President & Early Intervention Representative
Dr. Jean Johnson is the Associate Director of the Center on Disability Studies at the University of Hawai`i and is the Principal Investigator on a number of grants. She has been actively involved in issues involving newborn hearing screening, early intervention services, and early childhood issues for many years. She had worked as a preschool teacher of the deaf, audiologist, and health services administrator prior to becoming a professor at the University of Hawai`i, where she also teaches in the MCH-Lend Program. She holds graduate faculty appointments in the Department of Early Childhood and the Special Education Department of the College of Education at the University of Hawai`i.
From 1987 to 1999, Dr. Johnson directed the Early Intervention Part C program for infants and toddlers with special needs in Hawai`i. In that capacity, she was active in 1990 in Hawai`i’s passage of the nation’s first legislation mandating newborn hearing screening. She has directed a large-scale research project in newborn hearing screening and published extensively in the field of early childhood and newborn hearing screening. Dr. Johnson serves as a grant reviewer for a number of federal agencies.
She is a Fellow of the American Speech-Language Hearing Association and represented Hawai`i between 1992 and 2005 on the Legislative Council of the American Speech-Language Hearing Association. In 1996, she was appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Education to serve on the Federal Interagency Coordinating Council. In Hawai`i, she has been appointed by the Governor to serve on the State Council on Developmental Disabilities, the Special Education Advisory Council, and the Hawai`i Early Intervention Coordinating Council. She is a member and past Chair of the Board of Directors for Easter Seals Hawai`i and the Easter Seals Hawai`i Foundation. She currently serves as Vice-Chair of the Learning Disabilities of Hawai`i Board of Directors and also Vice-Chair of the Good Beginnings Alliance.
