Valerie James Abbott
Author, Family Educator, Center for Family Involvement at the Partnership for People with Disabilities at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU)
About
Valerie James Abbott is an award-winning author, a parent-champion for early hearing detection and intervention and co-founder of Late Onset Hearing Loss Awareness Week. She serves as a 1-3-6 family educator at the Center for Family Involvement at the Partnership for People with Disabilities at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), supporting families of children recently identified with hearing loss and leading projects aimed at reducing loss to follow up for the Virginia Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) Program. Her debut children’s book, Padapillo, was published in May 2021. The book is based on the true story of how her family discovered and came to understand her youngest child’s late onset hearing loss.