What We Do

Our ability to hear and engage with others and the environment around us is foundational to healthy aging.  The Johns Hopkins Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health is the only global research institution focused exclusively on issues related to hearing loss and public health in older adults. 

Cochlear Center researchers are interested in understanding the impact of hearing loss on public health. We focus on what can be done now across five core areas - population health evidence, public awareness, policy & legislation, technology, and healthcare delivery - to address hearing loss in older adults at scale.

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Mission

Ensuring that older adults can effectively hear and engage with the people and world around them is key to optimizing health and well-being. The Cochlear Center is dedicated to recruiting and training a generation of researchers, clinicians and public health experts who can study the impact that hearing loss has on public health, develop and test strategies to address hearing loss and help implement effective policies for hearing loss at the local, national, and global levels.

Vision

The Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health will work to effectively optimize the health and function of an aging society and become the premier global resource for ground-breaking research and training on hearing loss and public health.

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    Team

    Meet our faculty, associate faculty, staff, postdoctoral fellows, and trainees

    Team
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    Funding

    Learn about our funding sources and how to support our work

    Funding
  • Center News

    Center News

    News by and about Cochlear Center research, initiatives, training programs, and events 

    Center News
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    Events

    Learn something new every month with our Seminar Speaker Series and other events

    Events
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    Newsletter

    Stay up to date with Cochlear Center research highlights, events, and training opportunities with our monthly newsletter

    Newsletter
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    For the Media

    Cochlear Center faculty, research staff, and trainees come from diverse disciplines and can share their expertise on a variety of topics

    For the Media
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    Contact

    For general inquiries, more information about training and learning opportunities, and for questions about research study design

    Contact

Annual Reports

These yearly summaries synopsize our work at the intersection of aging, hearing, and public health.

 

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Our History and Name

The Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health is based in the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The Center launched in 2018, with more than $20 million in existing grant funding from the National Institutes of Health focused on Center-mission areas, a $10 million gift from Cochlear Ltd., and other philanthropic funding. The Center draws on the expertise of faculty members, research staff, and trainees from a broad array of disciplines to advance the mission areas of the Center in the U.S. and globally.

The Cochlear Center takes part of its name from Cochlear Ltd., an Australian company that exclusively develops cochlear implants and other implantable hearing technologies. Cochlear Ltd. and the Center share the belief that hearing and effective communication are fundamental to human health and functioning but that hearing loss, particularly among older adults, remains poorly addressed in society. Cochlear Ltd.’s $10 million gift to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to help create this Center reflects this shared vision. This gift provides important support, but it’s only a fraction of the Center’s overall funding - the vast majority of which comes from the NIH.

To preserve scientific integrity and avoid any real or perceived conflicts of interest, the Center does not have any programmatic areas of research related to the kinds of implantable hearing technologies produced by Cochlear Ltd. Of the millions of people in the world with hearing loss, 95% have mild to moderate forms for which cochlear implants are not clinically indicated. These individuals are the focus of the Center’s mission.