One in every 200 babies will contract congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV), but thanks to the advocacy work of Dr. Mallory Baker ’05, this statistic could become a thing of the past. 

For over a decade, Baker has been working in pediatric audiology, diagnosing and treating hearing loss in children from birth to young adulthood. There are many reasons why a child could experience hearing loss, but Baker found a common thread in many of the families she worked with – congenital CMV. 

Congenital CMV is the leading non-genetic cause of hearing loss and the leading cause of birth defects in children, including cerebral palsy, microcephaly, organ abnormalities, vision loss, seizures, and death. It is a common virus with incredibly low public awareness. “I have interacted with families who have children with congenital CMV... and have heard the same refrain over and over again. ‘Why didn't I know? Why didn't anybody tell me I could have prevented this?’” Baker said. 

Understanding the impact that this preventable virus had on her patients and their families, Baker decided it was time to act. She founded the Washington CMV Project in February 2020, creating the logo and building a website—skills she attributes to her time working on Prep’s newspaper, The Seattle Prep Panther—with the hope of raising awareness for CMV and its prevention. A month later, the COVID-19 pandemic would take the world by storm and give the general public a better understanding of viruses, how they can be spread, and concepts like symptomatic and asymptomatic. It was a spark that helped ignite the flame for the Washington CMV Project. 

Soon after its founding, the Project petitioned the Washington State Board of Health, which tabled the issue until 2025, likely due to the pressures of the pandemic. Baker, however, was not satisfied and knew that work in CMV advocacy needed to begin sooner. She and the parents of children impacted by CMV took a grassroots approach, posting on social media and contacting state representatives. This effort led her to Senator Noel Frame, who has a personal connection to CMV. With the guidance of Sen. Frame and Representative Riccelli, SB 5829 was introduced to the Washington State Senate, a bill that mandates the Washington Department of Health provide prenatal education on congenital CMV to mothers and directs the Board of Health to consider infant CMV screening by the end of 2025. The bill passed unanimously, was signed into law by Gov. Inslee in March, and took effect in June of this year, coinciding with CMV Awareness Month—a happy coincidence. 

Baker and the Washington CMV Project have been doing the necessary advocacy work since 2020, but with this new law, there will be more reach and resources available to child-bearing mothers through the Department of Health. There’s no telling how much work is left in raising awareness for congenital CMV, but in the words of Dr. Baker, “If every person tells one more person that didn’t know [about CMV], then we’ve done our job.”