John Tracy Clinic Celebrates 65 Years of Service to Children With Hearing Loss

Photo: Louise and Spencer Tracy with their daughter, Susie, and son, John—namesake of the John Tracy Clinic.

The Figueroa Corridor is home to several respected charitable organizations that offer crucial services to children and families. One of these is John Tracy Clinic (JTC), which provides free services to parents of young children with hearing loss, offering hope, guidance, and encouragement.

When Louise Tracy—wife of actor Spencer Tracy—founded the JTC in 1942, it was the only organization in the world to provide services completely free of charge to parents of infants and preschool-aged children born with hearing loss. Louise named the center after her and Spencer’s son John Ten Broeck Tracy, who passed away earlier this year at the age of 82.

Throughout John’s childhood and adolescence, Louise traveled extensively to study techniques that would help him develop the speech and language skills he would need to be part of the hearing and speaking world. It was these techniques, and many more she discovered on her own, that she later refined at the clinic.

“As a child, John Tracy couldn't have known that he would be the inspiration for a whole movement to give new hope to parents of children with hearing loss,” says JTC President Barbara Hecht, Ph.D. “John Tracy Clinic is dedicated to carrying on the legacy of John and his family.”

Today, JTC is the largest private provider of services for young deaf children and their families in the world, and the only education center of its kind to provide all family services without charge. More than 25,000 families a year participate in one or more of the Clinic's programs.
The Clinic offers parent-centered, speech and language education and audiological assessment for children five and younger with hearing loss. This includes a parent/infant program, adult classes and support groups, a preschool, a correspondence course, summer sessions, and community hearing screenings. JTC also offers a master’s degree and a credential program in deaf education with the University of San Diego.

The Clinic’s newest program, Baby Sound Check™, trains medical staff in community healthcare clinics to conduct early and periodic screening as part of regular well-baby checkups. Such an effort is expected to help thousands of children whose hearing loss is overlooked in hospital birth screenings or who develop late onset deafness. With early detection and expert intervention, these children will have every opportunity to gain a level of reading readiness and spoken language on par with their hearing peers prior to kindergarten.

For more information on the John Tracy Clinic, please visit www.jtc.org or call 213-748-5481.