About Our Agency

Under the auspices of the Kiwanis Club of Kalamazoo, the Constance Brown Hearing and Speech Center, now called the Constance Brown Hearing Centers, was founded in 1942 as the Constance Brown Society for Better Hearing.

The Centers bear the name of a prominent local resident who had, herself, experienced hearing loss. In 1939, she left the bulk of her estate to the Kalamazoo Foundation to be used to establish an agency to prevent hearing loss and to help the hearing impaired.

An agency of the Greater Kalamazoo United Way, the Constance Brown Hearing Centers are accredited by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. The Centers are also approved by the Michigan Department of Public Health Children's Special Health Care Services and Michigan's Family Independence Agency - Title XIX Medicaid. The Centers are approved providers for many other insurance carriers as well.

The Centers are supported by fees for services; the Greater Kalamazoo United Way; the Kalamazoo Foundation through the Constance Brown Trust; and by individual and organizational contributions. Gifts to the Centers are needed and welcomed, and are tax-deductible.

Control of the Centers is vested in a volunteer board of directors that includes broad community representation.