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Bonnielin Swenor, MPH, PhD, joins the faculty of the Cochlear Center

I am delighted to announce that Bonnielin Swenor, MPH, PhD, has joined the Cochlear Center as our newest core faculty member.  Bonnie is a long-time collaborator and we have depended on her expertise many times, partnering on research around dual-sensory impairment (vision and hearing) - its prevalence, whether and how DSI contributes to cognitive decline, and how it exacerbates frailty.  Bonnie…

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Our Annual Report: Looking Back Can Be A Powerful Motivator

Author:  Frank R. Lin, MD PhD, Director of the Cochlear Center   Each year at the Cochlear Center we produce an annual report that summarizes our successes in research, training and policy work.  In the midst of the day to day of life it can be hard to see the bigger picture. But it is very, very satisfying to look at a year in its entirety and notice patterns, celebrate forgotten successes (…

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Cochlear Center and COVID-19

Author: Frank Lin, MD, PhD, Director of the Cochlear Center   It’s only April, but it feels like 2020 has already brought a year’s worth of challenges and changes as the world navigates the upheaval created by the global COVID-19 pandemic.   Here at the Cochlear Center, we are following the directives of Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg School of Public Health leadership to protect our…

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Navigating the Personal Sound Amplification Product Market

Author: Nicholas S. Reed, AuD   OTC hearing aids won’t be out until at the earliest 2020-2021 once the regulations go into effect.  What to do until then? Enter the PSAP.   In a previous blog post, we talked about the Over-The-Counter (OTC) Hearing Aid Act. However, OTC hearing aids won’t be out until at the earliest 2020-2021 once the regulations go into effect.  What to do until then? Enter…

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Over-The-Counter Hearing Aid Act of 2017

Author: Nicholas S. Reed, AuD   "Blindness cuts us off from things, but deafness cuts us off from people"  -- Helen Keller   The onset of hearing loss can impact the quality of life in older adults. Helping others with their hearing needs to improve overall quality of life is why I became a clinical audiologist. In 2015, I decided to change my path from a full-time clinician career to a…

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How many people have hearing loss in the United States?

Author: Adele Goman, Ph.D., Graphics: Mengru Liao, MA   Knowing how many people have hearing loss today is important for informing policy decisions and planning services to address hearing needs. In an article published in the American Journal of Public Health, we estimated the percentage of, and number of, individuals with hearing loss in the United States.   To estimate how many people have…

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Hearing Health Equity & Community-Based Approaches: Introductions

By Carrie Nieman, featuring Kevin DeMario   Hearing loss is common as we age but hearing aid use, the primary approach to managing hearing loss, is not. Nationally, only about 15-20% of older adults with hearing loss use hearing aids.  As with almost every other health condition in the United States, disparities in hearing health care exist based on race/ethnicity and socioeconomic…

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The Third Era of Public Health - Hearing Matters...

Author: Dr. Frank Lin With the launch of the new website for the Cochlear Center, I thought it’d be a great time to talk about the broader picture for how a Center focused on hearing loss and aging fits into the broader schema of public health. Namely, when most people think of public health, topics such as preventing infectious diseases or reducing rates of cardiovascular disease generally come…

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