World Hearing Day 2024

Facilitator:

• Dr. Caitlin Barr (Soundfair CEO). Dr Caitlin Barr is CEO of Soundfair, a hearing charity all about making hearing seen and people heard. Caitlin is a clinical audiologist by training, with a PhD that focused on understanding how hearing care can better meet the needs and preferences of adults with hearing loss. Caitlin is passionate about social and emotional health (and how this is related to our ears) and creating a system and society that fully supports this.

Panel members

• Patrick McNeil. Patrick McNeil is Macquarie University’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Medicine and Health, providing leadership of both the clinical and academic components of MQ Health, representing Australia’s first fully integrated academic health sciences enterprise under a university’s leadership.
• Michele Nealon. Michele Nealon is the Macquarie University Hearing Coordinator. Identifying as hard of hearing, Michele’s lived experience is the driver behind her push for the greater inclusion of people with lived experience across all areas of employment and society more generally.
• Nomiki Lau. Nomiki Lau is currently a Finance Analyst in healthcare software. She is also a volunteer at Hear For You since 2021 – a not-for-profit organisation that supports and offers guidance to teenagers living with deafness or hearing loss.
• Joshua Sealy. Josh Sealy is a profoundly deaf psychology PhD candidate at Macquarie University. Drawing from his own lived experiences as a signing and speaking deaf person, his thesis topic is on disability, mainly emphasising the distinction between disability and pathology, and constructing a framework to help clarify what (disabled) people truly need in order to have a good life.

Prioritise your hearing health and get your hearing screened for free and on World Hearing Day.

As we get older, it is important to regularly check our hearing. An early detection and intervention of hearing loss results in the best possible outcomes – not only for hearing, but also for social engagement, relationships, cognition, and mental health.

Do you feel like you:

• might be missing out on some sounds
• have to ask people to repeat themselves
• struggle to follow conversations in noisy environments
• are being told you have the TV up too loud
• can’t hear well on the phone
• avoid noisy situations, like cafés and restaurants, because it’s just too hard to hear?

Our hearing screening is a quick and easy way to determine how well you hear sounds across different pitches.

Our free hearing screenings will operate on a first-come, first-served basis with a waitlist, so get in early to secure your spot.

Where: Meet on the ground floor of the Australian Hearing Hub at our Hearing Screening stand to sign up.

When: Monday, 4 March 2024.

Time: 10am to 1pm.

With: our fantastic Masters of Clinical Audiology students.

Should a more comprehensive audiological evaluation be required after the screening, you will be referred to the Macquarie University Speech and Hearing Clinic, and their team of experienced, evidence-based clinicians will provide you with excellent care and independent advice.

Researchers

You’ll be able to meet researchers who specialise in hearing and find out what they are currently working on. These researchers include:

• Lilly Leaver
• Rebecca Holt
• Fadwa Alnafjan
• Chris Pastras
• Faezeh Arshadi
• Behrouz Aghajanloo
• Motahare Khorrami
• Masoud Mohseni
• Sriram Boothalingam

People with lived experience

People with lived experience have volunteered to offer their stories. They can tell you how you can best engage with them and answer any questions you may have. A range of people are involved, including individuals:

• with congenital deafness
• with acquired hearing loss
• who use hearing aids
• who use cochlear implants
• who use sign language
• who use no devices at all.

Come and find the person you wish to speak to.

Hearing legends

We have a range of people who have spent their life working in the hearing sector and they are lining up to tell you their stories. These include:

• Harvey Dillon
• Ann Porter
• Philip Newall
• Sue Walters

In 2021, a consortium led by four co-chairs and 70 volunteer members – including those with a lived experience of hearing loss, expertise in audiology and broader hearing healthcare – formed to create the Australia and New Zealand Hearing Health Collaborative (ANZ HHC), in order to take action to address the unmet needs of adults with hearing loss.

Membership of the ANZ HHC extends to both national and international organisations, encompassing a diverse group of stakeholders, including:

• leaders with lived experience (LEX)
• society representatives
• speech and language therapists
• general practitioners (GPs)
• hearing aid specialists
• audiologists
• ear, nose and throat experts
• payer/policy
• non-government organisations
• governmental agencies
• academia
• organisations implementing hearing care solutions within the community.

The ANZ HHC consists of three groups focused on the development of guidelines, education and advocacy. These groups mark an unprecedented opportunity to bring thought leaders and representatives together to explore how each of these goals might be achieved, reflecting an important milestone in supporting adults who are deaf or hard of hearing.

The ANZ HHC aims to work collaboratively to:

1. develop and deliver best practice guidelines that focus on the benefits of timely diagnosis and effective person-centred support, including access to sign language for all adults with hearing loss across their lifespan
2. prioritise hearing health and ensure that those at risk of hearing loss have regular hearing checks (eg those over 50 years, those with family history or those with a noisy lifestyle)
3. ensure that adults with hearing loss have equitable access to timely, effective, affordable and culturally appropriate support to improve their lived situation in whatever form they require
4. ensure evidence-based tools and relevant training are available and accessible for consumers and health care professionals to guide assessment, referral, treatment and care for adults with hearing loss across their lifespan
5. educate and upskill all those involved directly and indirectly in the pathways to hearing care in order to achieve equitable access and appropriate training as outlined in points 3 and 4.

ANZ requires a stronger commitment to a standard of care for better hearing care through effective and patient-centred guidelines, education and advocacy. This representative group from the ANZ hearing community recognises that addressing these challenges is a critical piece of work which needs to be progressed.

To find out more about the ANZ HHC and to get involved, contact us at anzguidelines@adulthearing.com or call 0436 442 400.

Display holders include:

• Bradley Reporting
• Cochlear
• GN Resound
• Hearing Australia
• Hearing Connections
• Hearing Loop Australia
• Macquarie University Speech and Hearing Clinic
• Next Sense
• Sennheiser
• Word of Mouth

Display holders include:

• Hear for You
• Hearing Matters Australia
• Independent Audiologists Australia Inc
• Dr. Jessica Kirkness
• Parents of Deaf Children
• Lived Experience Network of Deaf and Hard of Hearing
• Macquarie University Grassroots Network
• Macquarie University Student Wellbeing
• Soundfair
• Sound Scouts
• Meniere's Research Australia