Our results indicate that a single unilateral blast significantly impairs the structural and functional integrity at all levels of the central auditory neuraxis, or the auditory pathway in the higher brain centers. Overall, it is evident that the structural integrity of brain tissue is compromised at all levels.
A Veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq Urges Better Hearing Protection for Soldiers
We often hear about the devastating injuries sustained by soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Their suffering is profound and should be a bigger part of our national consciousness. We Americans should also talk about the most common disabilities experienced by veterans—hearing loss and tinnitus. These are less visible but insidious conditions that can seriously upend every aspect of veterans’ lives: their overall physical and psychological wellness, along with social interactions, even work performance.
Americans With Hearing Loss Can Receive Free Telephone Captioning Services
Phone conversations can be exhausting and frustrating for individuals with hearing loss. Telephones render the communicators unable to see each other when talking, so they can’t take advantage of important visual cues, including knowing when it’s their turn to talk.
HHF Board Chair John Dillard Participates in Congressional Hearing Research Program
The Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs’ (CDMRP), Hearing Restoration Research Program (HRRP) consumer advocate John Dillard participated in January the evaluation of research applications submitted to the HRRP in January.
Veterans Leading the Way
HHF leaders John Dillard and Timothy Higdon are two U.S. Army veterans who bring, collectively, over four decades of military service to HHF as its Board of Directors chair and CEO, respectively. Here they share the perspectives and experiences gained from their service in the military and what they hope to accomplish in their new roles.
Combined Federal Campaign: Show Some Love
It’s easy to give to Hearing Health Foundation (HHF) through the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC). In 2018 donors pledged a total of more than $90 million through the CFC, the workplace giving program for current and retired federal and military personnel.
Katelyn and Solenne
Sisters Katelyn, 12, and Solenne, 11, of Connecticut, are among the tens of millions of individuals who benefit from advances in hearing loss research. Both girls were born with severe to profound hearing loss but showed no benefit from hearing aids. They have both since received cochlear implants (CIs).
Outsmarting the Most Common Military Injury: How One Veteran Is Helping Future Generations
After meeting qualifications through a rigorous annual application process, HHF Board Chair John Dillard has been a tinnitus consumer reviewer for three years, a role he expects to continue.
You Can Lead the Way
By Col. John Dillard, U.S. Army (Retired)
Folks like you are the reason Hearing Health Foundation (HHF) has just completed its 60th anniversary year of groundbreaking work toward better treatments and permanent cures for hearing loss and tinnitus. Your donations make it possible.
Tinnitus and hearing loss, respectively, are the number one and number two disabilities reported by returning American military personnel.
Thank you for everything you do.
Living with noise-induced hearing loss and tinnitus following 26 years of service in the U.S. Army, I strongly share your desire for more scientific developments — both to restore hearing and to prevent its loss.
Every person serving on our Board of Directors is also connected to a hearing disorder in some way and shares our passion for progress. It is coming. As each year passes we learn more and more about key processes in the brain and auditory system.
We’re grateful for these discoveries that bring us closer to hearing regeneration in adult mice (as human proxies for now), and toward new treatments for tinnitus, Ménière's disease, and related conditions. But we know more must be accomplished for all of us to enjoy a better quality of life.
Your generosity can make possible the discoveries we — our veterans, our parents, our children, our spouses, our friends — urgently need.
Please, if you are able, give today to HHF to fund more innovative scientists in 2019-2020 and accelerate much-needed treatments and cures.
HHF will direct 100% of your gift toward the program your choose — Hearing Restoration Project (HRP), Emerging Research Grants (ERG), Ménière's Disease Grants (MDG), or Education. Thank you for your consideration and for being part of our mission.
Suffering After Sacrifice
By Lauren McGrath
Every Veterans Day, Hearing Health Foundation (HHF) celebrates the brave individuals who have served and sacrificed to defend our country. We are grateful to our active military members and veterans for their courageous protection of American values and freedoms.
As we honor those who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces, we acknowledge a tragic and troubling health problem. An astounding number of veterans—60% of those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan—live with tinnitus and noise-induced hearing loss. In 2017, the Veterans Administration reported 1.79 million disability compensation recipients for tinnitus and 1.16 million compensation recipients for hearing loss, the number one and two disabilities, respectively. In an HHF video about hearing loss treatment, Retired Army Colonel John Dilliard, Chair-Elect of HHF’s Board of Directors, explains, “The noise from repeated gunfire and high-frequency, high-performance aircraft engines takes its toll on the human hearing mechanisms.” Col. Dillard lives with both tinnitus and hearing loss following 26 years of service.
John Dillard and fellow soldiers, Fort Irwin National Training Center, 1977.
Dr. Bruce Douglas, 93, remembers the moment his hearing became severely compromised while serving in the Navy during the Korean War. “On what was my 26th birthday, after pulling the trigger on the M1 rifle with no protection (none of us had any) multiple times, I was left with tendonitis in both knees—and worse, permanent, chronic tinnitus due to acoustic trauma. My hearing went downhill ever after, and every imaginable kind of sound and sensation has resulted from my tinnitus,” Douglas writes in the Fall 2018 issue of Hearing Health.
Hearing protection training must start as soon as one enters the military. But there is a misconception that hearing protection inhibits vital communication and mission readiness because hearing signs of danger is imperative to survival. “Soldiers want to be able to hear the snap of the twig and want to be able to be situationally. As a result, they are often resistant to wearing hearing protection,” Col. Dillard says.
Fortunately, sophisticated hearing protection technology does exist so that military personnel do not have to choose between protecting their ears or their lives. Examples include noise-attenuating helmets, which use ear cups to protect against hazardous sound, and Tactical Communication and Protective Systems, which protect against loud noises while amplifying soft ones.
The U.S. military continues to work toward safer hearing in the service. The U.S. Army has developed the Tactical Communication and Protective System (TCAPS), which are earbuds that dampen dangerous noises to safe levels using microphones and noise-canceling technology, while also providing amplification of softer sounds and two-way communication systems. An initiative by the U.S. Air Force called Total Exposure Health (TEH), meanwhile, focuses on overall health both on and off the job, will measure cumulative noise exposure over the course of 24 hours. These developments and others, which HHF applauds, are covered in greater detail in Hearing Heath’s Fall 2017 issue.
As greater preventative technology for our military becomes available, HHF remains dedicated to finding better treatments and cures for tinnitus and hearing loss to benefit the lives of millions of Americans, including veterans, a disproportionately affected group. We hope you will join us in remembering their sacrifices with gratitude and compassion.