A Public Health Approach to Hearing Loss and Aging

At the Johns Hopkins Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health, we are dedicated to training up the next generation of clinicians and researchers to study the impact that hearing loss in older adults has on public health and to develop and implement public health strategies and solutions for hearing loss. The Center is proud to present this course which introduces a public health approach to aging and hearing population-based research, reviews the state of public health policy and ongoing interventions, and discusses the current epidemiologic research linking hearing loss to cognitive and healthcare outcomes in older adults, including dementia. Learners will be hearing from Johns Hopkins faculty and researchers who will speak on their expertise in areas of otolaryngology, audiology, epidemiology, gerontology, and public health policy/economics.

• Background
• Introduces hearing loss as a public health issue and provides a framework for evaluating how hearing loss is important to the health of older adults, including a discussion of basic epidemiologic study design. Provides a rationale for why hearing loss may be related to dementia diagnosis in older adults.
• Hearing and Outcomes
• Summarizes current epidemiologic research linking hearing loss to cognitive and healthcare outcomes in older adults, including dementia.
• Application and Translation
• Presents an overview of hearing’s impact on healthcare utilization, and of the translation of population based research into policy and interventions.