Hearing Health Foundation (HHF) thanks our U.S. service members and veterans for their sacrifices. We remind them, and the public, that, tragically, this group is disproportionately at risk for sustaining tinnitus and 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.

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.

Dillard: Between us we have two conditions that are the top health concerns in the military: hearing loss and tinnitus. Service members are exposed to loud sounds, whether sudden high-pitched gunfire or constant motors or machinery, and HHF is strongly committed to helping these folks. But it’s not just veterans and service members with hearing loss and tinnitus who benefit from HHF’s research—what’s remarkable is that there are so many demographics affected, and there’s so much under the umbrella besides hearing loss and tinnitus, such as Usher syndrome, Ménière’s disease, pediatric hearing loss, hyperacusis, and auditory processing disorder.

Higdon: Yes, hearing loss and tinnitus affect a broad range of individuals beyond those who served. A broad outlook underlies our grants to researchers, too—one overarching goal of the research is to unravel the basic science at the root of hearing and balance, both of which are incredibly complex systems, and this will help us to better understand specific hearing and balance conditions.

Dillard: As a tinnitus patient, I have experienced firsthand what it feels like to try to get help for it. After passing a standard brain scan—done to rule out a tumor—I was told I had “garden-variety tinnitus.” That set me down the path of trying to figure out a cause and treatment. For me, Pawel Jastreboff’s Tinnitus Retraining Therapy has been the most useful, because it revealed to me there is an emotional component of how you react to tinnitus; an attention component of how much you notice it; a memory component of how much you remember its effect; and an auditory component with how much your brain compensates for what you’ve lost. It is helpful to know how all these pieces come together to create a distracting tinnitus.

Higdon: I was a combat engineer officer and doing a lot of demolition—military exercises with armored vehicles and heavy equipment with units in Germany and then South Korea. The vehicle I used was basically a diesel engine with four wheels attached to it. We were issued earplugs, but we needed to be able to talk on the radio, and frankly back then hearing protection just wasn’t part of the culture. My hearing loss is in the midrange frequencies in both ears. I have been able to manage it, but as I’ve gotten older, I have become more aware of how losing this sense is silent—it’s gradual, and you really don’t notice it until it’s too late. Some of the research I encountered when I first arrived at HHF, such as how untreated hearing loss affects overall health, has been incredible to learn about. I see that with older adults, it can mean you don’t fully understand your doctor and you may relapse because you are not effectively able to hear medical instructions.

I think our effort to show the impact hearing conditions have on daily life, and the positive impact that treating hearing loss has, will encourage people to be more cognizant about their own hearing—taking steps to protect their hearing, get it tested, and if needed, treat it. We’re both excited to lead HHF in promoting a message of preventionand education while underwriting research that leads to new discoveries and treatments.

This article originally appeared in the Fall 2019 issue of Hearing Health magazine.