World Wide Hearing

Affiliated Projects

WWHearing Projects in the Field:

China, 2006-10 - Working with the China Rehabilitation Research Centre for Deaf Children (CRRCDC), four hundred children in poor areas were fitted  with hearing aids. These included fitting by primary school teachers trained as hearing health care workers to children in the primary health care group.  The project also led to government-supervised development of the profession of hearing aid dispensing technician.  Economic studies conducted by a researcher from a Netherlands university concluded that "active screening and provision of hearing aids at the secondary care level is slightly more costly than passive screening and fitting of hearing aids at the tertiary care level, but seems also able to reach a higher coverage of hearing aids services. Although crude estimates indicate that both passive and active screening programs can be cautiously considered as cost-effective according to international thresholds, important questions remain regarding the implementation of the latter."

Brazil, 2006-2010 - WWHearing teamed up with the audiology department of the University of Sao Paulo for the purpose of developing a streamlined hearing aid delivery model as compared to the system currently employed by government clinics.

The Philippines, 2007-2010 - WWHearing provided expertise to the organization Better Hearing Philippines, Inc., in order to help them secure funding (from Lions Club International) to implement a project in the Manila area.  Along with distributing up to four hundred hearing aids, the project included hearing-impairment training for community healthcare workers.

India, 2006-2010 - WWHearing and the Christian Medical College (CMC) in Vellore, India, worked together to try to solve the problem of how to identify people with hearing impairment in poor, rural areas using teachers and community healthcare workers who were trained in audiometric techniques.  The pilot succeeded in fitting 760 out of an expected 1150 hearing aids on local people who would otherwise have not been able to obtain one.  The same comparative economic studies conducted in China were also conducted in India.  They showed similar costs at primary/secondary level as at tertiary level.  The WWHearing approach of shifting hearing health care from hospitals and clinics to community-based provision was found to work successfully when compared to traditional models.

Jordan, 2006-2011 - At the H.E.A.R. (Hearing aids, Ear molds, Audiology, and Resources) department at the Holy Land Institute for the Deaf, its staff worked with WWHearing to develop the Hearing Express service model.  The Hearing Express model involves working with local community rehabilitation centers and alternative market outlets that already exist within the community in order to provide rapid screenings, diagnostic, and hearing aid fittings for low-income individuals.

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