Each device costs between $5,000 and $8,000, Ally’s mother Melissa Tumblin said, and they have to be replaced every five years. When her insurance company denied coverage of her hearing device, Tumblin formed Ear Community to help advocate for coverage of these devices to make sure no one is left unable to hear because of private insurance companies’ refusal to grant coverage.
Have a Hearing Loss, in the Hospital?
Hospitals are full of older patients who are often hard of hearing, and data suggests that this affects healthcare outcomes. A study of patients in the Medicare system, published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society in 2018, compared readmission rates of patients who self-reported hearing loss with those who did not.
Equality for All: Understanding Disability Discrimination in the Workplace
Unfortunately, disability discrimination in the workplace is a valid concern. According to the Washington Post, out of 252,599 closed cases of medical or disability discrimination, 21 percent received relief, and 2 percent had a discrimination finding.
Hearing Help for Veterans
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has long supported the health of service members, past and present. Here’s how you can file for hearing care benefits.
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.
If It Sounds Too Good to Be True, It Probably Is
Before you turn over your hard-earned money, read on for information from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on how to recognize and report investment fraud and financial scams. Hearing Health Foundation (HHF) spoke with the SEC’s Charu Chandrasekhar and Owen Donley.
New NIDCD Director Debara Tucci Is Committed to Hearing Protection
Debara L. Tucci, M.D., M.S., M.B.A., became the director of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), on September 3, 2019. Dr. Tucci was funded twice by Hearing Health Foundation’s Emerging Research Grants (ERG) program in the 1990s.
Staying Vital
My father is an avid concertgoer who turned 61 in February, and I’ve been trying for more than two years—since I joined the team at Hearing Health Foundation (HHF)—to convince him to get his hearing tested.
Breaking Stereotypes: Hearing Loss in the Media
Hearing loss is both underrepresented and misrepresented in the media, which frustrates many of us who actually have hearing loss. When hearing loss is represented, individuals who are hard of hearing have typically been depicted as elderly, isolated, and disabled individuals who are dependent on others.
Net Gains
Along with Silent Network and its sign language programming, a new network called Access Network was launched in 2018, providing open captioned and language-free programming for the general public and deaf, hard of hearing, and people learning English as a second language.