By Nadine Dehgan

Hearing Health Foundation (HHF) is working around the clock to help find cures and treatments and also to better the lives of those with hearing loss. And we are doing it with a small and incredible team.

Recently I attended a bowling outing with HHF's full-time staff and our mighty army of interns. (Please see the photo.) Missing are Yishane Lee and Robin Wisser Kidder whose wonderful talent is used to edit and design Hearing Health magazine; Caroline Oberweger who aids with foundation grants; and Frankie Huang who helped as a marketing intern.

Thanks to these talented people, HHF has been able to: 

• Increase awareness of preventable noise-induced hearing loss by developing. partnerships with peer organizations and corporations.

• Register to fundraise in every state—a necessary and time-consuming process.

• Write blog posts and magazine articles on various hearing loss topics as well as hearing research.

• Secure media placement in the following outlets: The New Yorker, The Guardian, Men’s Journal, and others.

• Rewrite our internal policies and procedures to streamline activities and reduce costs.

• Send supporters and constituents countless communications including magazines, letters, and appeals to raise funds so we can continue our important work.

• Communicate with the Federal Drug Administration, Federal Trade Commission, and various elected officials regarding the critical need for affordable hearing health care (e.g.,. over-the-counter hearing aids) and significance of funding hearing research.

• Advocate for the reversal of the 2018 federal budget’s proposed elimination of all federalUniversal Newborn Hearing Screening funding, $18 million in total.

• Announce our newly formed partnership with Hearing Charity of America’s Hearing Aid Donation Project to collect used hearing aids to give to those who need.

• Increase Hearing Health magazine ad sales revenue enabling HHF to invest in growing its readership.

• Continue to receive top ratings from charity watchdogs with HHF named twice in two categories in Consumer Reports’ top five best charities.

• And most importantly increase funding to our critical hearing and balance research programs promoting innovative approaches by both early-stage scientists and established experts in their fields!

At HHF we all live and breathe our mission. I would like to recognize and express my gratitude to those the who give of their time and talent to our cause.

There is much to do and many unmet research needs—but together we will get there.

From the bottom of my heart I am grateful and hope you wil join me in thanking these folks. They help make it all possible.

Nadine Dehgan is the chief executive officer of Hearing Health Foundation.