January 20-22, 2022
Fully Virtual
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Pre-Sessions
Registration cost for each pre-session workshop is $25 per person.
The following pre-session workshops are being held in conjunction with the 2019 Annual Conference of the Coalition for Global Hearing Health (CGHH). Each of these workshops will be held at Arizona State University on Friday October 25, 2019. The workshops provide more in-depth material and generally have more interaction or hands-on participation than is possible during the presentations at the conference. Enrollment in each pre-session workshops is $25.00 (USD) and can be paid as a part of your registration for the CGHH conference.
David Pither
Operating a Field Based Earmold Lab
9 AM - 3 PM
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A critical component of successful and sustainable community-based ear and hearing care services in low - and middle - income countries, is prompt provision of earmolds for dispensed hearing aids. Although, earmold laboratories can ensure success, the time to train and resources required for production can be prohibitive. However, when costs are kept low, the earmold lab can become a serendipitous cottage industry opportunity in a region that will benefit from a fiscal boost. This workshop will provide information about materials required as well as the protocol for production. The model created by the Ears, Inc. (a charitable organization), has been used effectively in many parts of the world, and enhanced local economy with much needed cottage industry skills. The workshop will provide instruction for production materials, and suggest the infra-structure for establishing the earmold lab, as well as recommend training procedures for the local program partners.
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Jim Saunders, Donna Carkeet, Stacie Ray, and Debra Fried
A Practical Guide to Humanitarian Missions for Improving Hearing Health
9 AM - 12 PM
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The workshop presenters have organized dozens of humanitarian outreach trips and non-profit programs in Central America, Africa, and Asia. Based on that experience the workshop will explore how humanitarian outreach has changed in recent years and discuss some ethical issues inherit in doing this type of work. The practical issues related to humanitarian trips in audiology and otolaryngology will be explored including selecting a location for the work, recruiting team members, team and local site preparation, equipment needs, establishing follow up, and sustainability issues. Specific issues and methods of educating both the team members and local providers will be presented and discussed. Teaching methods employed in this pre-conference session will include lectures, presentations by a panel of experts (followed by a Q & A session) and conclude with suggestions for best practices for humanitarian trips focusing on hearing health care.
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Ingrid McBride, Robert Margolis, Bopanna Ballachandra, Laura Coco, Audra Renyi, Lauri Nelson, Karen Mojica, Tersia De Kock, Laura Prigge, Dirk Koekemoer, Dave Davis
Digital Health: Implementing Telehealth and mHealth
12:30 – 4:30 PM
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Digital health is becoming more mainstream across health care and its scope includes the use of telehealth and mobile health (mHealth). According to the FDA, digital health can improve access, reduce inefficiencies, reduce costs, increase quality and make medicine more personalized. Telehealth is a system of delivering health care in which the provider and patient are separated by distance. Tele-audiology is the utilization of telehealth to provide audiologic services and may include the full scope of audiologic practice. It is well known that there is a shortage of hearing care professionals in the USA and around the world, that restricts access to hearing health care.
Developing countries and rural and/or remote areas may have no audiologists or trained hearing health care providers. Transportation, travel distance, geographical barriers, and cost may prevent many individuals from seeking and receiving hearing health care. Connecting developing countries and rural areas to audiology services in developed countries and urban areas can be done using telehealth and has the potential to bridge the gap between the demand for care and the available supply as well as to provide cost-effective care. mHealth is a specific type of telehealth that uses mobile devices for self-care. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) defines mHealth as “the use of mobile and wireless devices (e.g. smartphones and tablets) to improve health outcomes, health care services, and health research. Applications include smartphone-based hearing screening, aural rehabilitation, tinnitus management, and automated diagnostic testing, among others. This workshop will explore emerging technologies and the application of digital health for global hearing health care, but is not limited to tele-audiology. Attendees will gain practical information needed to implement telehealth and mHealth. Experts in telehealth and mHealth will describe telehealth and mHealth projects underway across the globe via lectures followed by a question and answer session. Technology options currently available to implement telehealth and mHealth screening and diagnostic services will be demonstrated with opportunities for hands-on interaction.
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Girija Sundar, David K. Brown, James W. Hall III
Train the Trainer Workshop: On Audiology Support Personnel
8:30 AM – 12:00 PM
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About 360 million people worldwide live with disabling hearing loss (5.3% of the world's population). Approximately 80% of persons with hearing loss do not have access to hearing health care primarily owing to unavailability of hearing care service providers. Among the 46 countries in Africa, only South Africa has an educational program leading to a degree in audiology (Fagan & Jacobs 2009). The estimated ratio of audiologists to the general population in developing countries ranges from one for every 6.25 million persons to one for every half a million persons (Goulios & Patuzzi, 2008). Training of audiology professionals based on the advanced audiology degree model is inefficient and not practical in low resource regions of the world. Therefore, we propose a sustainable tiered model of "learn while you work" training in basic hearing health care.
A tiered training model allows for the trainee to envision a viable profession and access to vertical growth in hearing health care professions. We believe this process can meet the current demands as well as the demands of We propose an intense 1-day hands-on workshop to provide training to the trainers. the future of low resource regions in the world. Our proposed workshop will reflect upon the training in core competencies that can advance the process of this training. Central to improving access and quality is the recruitment and retention of the hearing care providers. This presentation will offer guidelines for a basic curriculum for training of ancillary personnel to provide hearing services as well as a tiered model of "learn-while-you-work", so that clinical competencies and sustainability can be achieved even at the non-traditional levels of training hearing care providers. The key elements to delivering appropriate standard of care include efficient, effective, and consistent practices and these points will be central to the workshop.
Learning Objectives
- Develop an understanding of a tiered model of training, curriculum design including traditional training, tele-audiology and simulations.
- Learn to apply current technologies in hearing screening and diagnostic testing.
- Build models for assessment and mentoring.
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Lisa Kovacs, Janet DesGeorges
Family Engagement and Empowerment in Humanitarian Missions
9:00 AM – 12:00 PM
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Hands & Voices has a history of working on projects which support the needs of families living around the globe. This work has expanded our knowledge of supports required by families living in diverse cultural and socio-economic communities. This has included representation and participation of the Family Centered Early Intervention Conference (2012, 2014, 2016, 2018) with participation on the development of the FCEI guiding principles Position Statement for global use. (http://www.fcei.at/unit/fcei/positionstatement) Hands & Voices is also a part of the Global Parents of Deaf/Hard of hearing Children, representing over 20 countries around the world.
Audiologic supports and services to families in underserved settings provide unique challenges and opportunities. This session will encourage professionals to expand partnerships with families resulting in increased follow through by families once initial audiologic efforts have been conducted in international efforts. Hands & Voices recently completed a guide funded by Phonak's Pediatric Division called the "Guide to Parent/Professional Partnerships in the Hearing Healthcare Setting." This guidebook walks hearing care providers (HCP) through the process of creating the essential elements of partnership - from the perspective of families who contributed to the creation of this document. This resource can be used in several different settings. For hearing care providers: • Hearing Care Providers will be able to use the guide as a tool for enriching their individual relationships with families/patients. • Programs may consider implementing practices created from this guidebook for audiological services in clinics, research, training programs, and audiological missions/outreach. This session will include a test of the information from the guidebook to see how applicable it would be to humanitarian projects and a facilitated discussion of what additional considerations need to be included when providing audiological supports during and after humanitarian visits.
Learning Objectives
- Hearing healthcare professionals will be able to use the information provided in developing and sustaining effective partnerships with families to ensure effective outcomes for children who are Deaf/Hard of Hearing
- Hearing healthcare professionals will be able to self-reflect and evaluate the effectiveness of their partnership with each family they serve.
- Hearing healthcare professionals who participate in Humanitarian efforts will together discuss the needs of families beyond amplification fitting.
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Diego Santana, Patricia Castellanos de Muñoz, and Andrew Smith
Introduction to Public Health Planning for Hearing Impairment
12:30 PM - 3:30 PM
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WHO estimates that 466 million people in the world had disabling hearing loss in 2018 and 80% lived in low and middle income (LMI) countries. Hearing loss is also a significant problem amongst disadvantaged groups in high-income countries because it delays and damages development of language in young children, slows school progress, causes difficulties obtaining and keeping a job, increases dementia in older people, and leads to stigmatization at all ages. It results in poverty for individuals and families, and massive economic costs for society. Hearing loss is largely avoidable through appropriate prevention strategies but is generally neglected due to lack of awareness amongst health professionals and policy makers, as well as the general public. It can only be addressed on a large scale by adopting a public health approach within the existing health system.
The presenters also conduct 5-day courses on Public Health Planning for Hearing Impairment in collaboration with Universities in LMI countries. The courses aim to develop an expanding cadre of people in LMI countries with the skills to set up public-health interventions and programmes for prevention and rehabilitation of hearing loss. So far over 900 people from 43 countries have been trained in these courses.
This session will act as an introduction to the course by outlining key principles of public health needed to address hearing loss, and key actions needed for planning programmes on a large scale where there are scarce resources. The course is designed for academics and professionals in Otology, Audiology and allied fields, and health planners from Ministries of Health and Education, and Non-Governmental Organizations.
Learning Objectives
- Understand the global problem of ear disease and hearing loss: focusing on national, regional and global levels.
- Apply public health principles to primary, secondary & tertiary prevention and rehabilitation of hearing impairment/disability.
- Relate to the work in ear and hearing care of global organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and initiatives such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and their relevance at a local district level.
- Review the training and impact of Primary Ear and Hearing Care.
- Apply health education and health promotion activities at the community level.
- Understand and learn to apply principles of planning to develop ear and hearing health projects or programmes.
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James W. Hall III
Efficient and Effective Pre-School Hearing Screening: Essential for Successful Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI)
1:00 – 4:30 PM
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A successful EHDI program must include detection, diagnosis, and appropriate timely management of hearing loss in children beyond infancy. A successful EHDI program must include detection, diagnosis, and appropriate timely management of hearing loss in children beyond infancy. Children who pass newborn hearing screening may subsequently acquire hearing loss that interferes with speech and language acquisition, communication, and later educational achievement. The 2007 Joint Committee on Infant Hearing has identified 11 risk indicators for permanent congenital, delayed-onset or progressive hearing loss in children. Evidence from large-scale research studies confirms that the likelihood of permanent childhood hearing loss increases substantially in preschool years from birth to school entry. The prevalence of hearing loss in the school-age population may be two to three times higher than the prevalence in infancy. Universal early intervention for childhood hearing loss is possible only with efficient and effective preschool hearing screening. Unfortunately, accepted guidelines for preschool hearing screening are lacking even in countries with established universal newborn hearing screening programs. This presentation begins with a brief description of techniques available for preschool hearing screening. Literature on preschool hearing screening is briefly and critically reviewed. Most of the presentation is devoted to discussion of an effective, efficient, and evidence-based strategy for hearing screening of pre-school children. The session also addresses the advantages of systematic preschool hearing screening for earlier identification of communicatively-important hearing loss in countries lacking universal newborn hearing screening.
Learning Objectives
- Identify 3 reasons why preschool screening is necessary for universal diagnosis of hearing loss in young children.
- List 3 risk factors for hearing loss in preschool children.
- Describe technology for accurate and timely preschool hearing screening.
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