Make World Hearing Day Count

Far from just another calendar observance, March 3 marks an opportunity to raise awareness of hearing care—and the services provided by audiologists. Next week will bring World Hearing Day, an especially relevant day for the profession of audiology. Each year, the World Health Organization (WHO) designates March 3 as an international day of outreach on the subject of hearing care. This year’s theme is “Hear the Future.” We hope to make it easy for you to champion the cause using a new Digital Toolkit ASHA created for members. This year’s theme spotlights an anticipated rise in the number of people with hearing loss in the coming years. According to WHO, 466 million people worldwide live with disabling hearing loss. Unless action is taken, by 2030 the number will rise to nearly 630 million. In addition to expected growth in the number of people with hearing loss, WHO specified other key messages for this year’s World Hearing Day observance: How best to widely share appropriate preventative actions. Ensuring people with hearing loss can gain access to needed rehabilitation services and communication tools. Once again, ASHA will champion this important day domestically—and we hope our members will join our efforts. Awareness, prevention and access to the services of our members—these are points we can all get behind. Although in some respects the United States is in a better position than many other parts of the world when it comes to hearing health care, ...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Tags: Advocacy Audiology Hearing Assistive Technology hearing loss hearing protection Professional Development speech-language pathology Source Type: blogs