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10/10/2015  |   11:15 AM - 12:15 PM   |  Andrew Foster Auditorium

Satisfied? Sustaining Community-based Hearing Health Care

Global efforts to close the gap in hearing aid uptake for those in need in developing countries solves immediate problems while creating others. This presentation addresses these laudable hearing health attempts at solving the inequities, and moreover presents long-term sustainable solutions to ensure a realistic standard for local service providers who remediate audiological and communication disorders over the longer term. The alternative and evolving delivery systems and training curricula models that are presented reflect decades of work in the field of hearing health and speech and language therapy in least developed nations, work with humanitarian North-South efforts and present work in developing university masters level courses in East Africa.

• Participants will be able to list components of sustainable community Hearing Health Care in least developed countries.
• Participants will be able to recall methods for ensuring sustainability in least developed countries
• Participants will be able to discuss the merits of the curricula designed for university training in Hearing Health Care and Speech and Language therapy in least developed countries

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Ronald Brouillette (POC,Primary Presenter,Author), SEKOMU (University) in Tanzania, Ron_Brouillette@yahoo.com;
Ron initially learned practical audiology and deaf education from his 3 years younger deaf brother and his deaf friends who became 'projects' of his electrical engineering father. After high school and traipsing across the U.S. at the excuse of higher education, Ron obtained a masters degree, and worked at various schools for the Deaf including Rochester, NY and State Schools for the Deaf in Oregon, and Arizona. Ron answered the call of the wild to serve those with hearing loss and without services in Africa and Asia. He worked in various capacities in audiology and deaf education in over 18 developing countries for over 40 years with the exception of brief gaps for UN work, a University of Arizona PhD and 5 years teaching at the University of Manchester, England. He recently joined the Starkey Hearing Foundation to successfully develop community-based after services for recipients of hundreds of thousands of free hearing aids. He lasted two years there, and is now back in Tanzania developing masters level community-based audiology and deaf education training programs at the university level. Ron serves on the Mayflower Medical Outreach/Coalition for Global Hearing Health IHHAPP Team having initiated the hearing aid co-op buying scheme around 18 years ago while working with CBM in the Philippines.