Hearing care across the life course provided in the community.

Hearing care across the life course provided in the community. Bull World Health Organ. 2019 Oct 01;97(10):681-690 Authors: Suen JJ, Bhatnagar K, Emmett SD, Marrone N, Kleindienst Robler S, Swanepoel W, Wong A, Nieman CL Abstract Untreated hearing loss is recognized as a growing global health priority because of its prevalence and harmful effects on health and well-being. Until recently, little progress had been made in expanding hearing care beyond traditional clinic-based models to incorporate public health approaches that increase accessibility to and affordability of hearing care. As demonstrated in numerous countries and for many health conditions, sharing health-care tasks with community health workers (CHWs) offers advantages as a complementary approach to expand health-service delivery and improve public health. This paper explores the possibilities of task shifting to provide hearing care across the life course by reviewing several ongoing projects in a variety of settings - Bangladesh, India, South Africa and the United States of America. The selected programmes train CHWs to provide a range of hearing-care services, from childhood hearing screening to management of age-related hearing loss. We discuss lessons learnt from these examples to inform best practices for task shifting within community-delivered hearing care. Preliminary evidence supports the feasibility, acceptability and effectiveness of hearing care delivered b...
Source: Bulletin of the World Health Organization - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Tags: Bull World Health Organ Source Type: research