New Opportunities for Promoting
Hearing Solutions
Dr. Kochkin is Executive Director of the Better Hearing Institute in Alexandria, Virginia. Previously he was Director of Market Development & Market Research at Knowles Electronics, chairman of the Market Development Committee of the Hearing Industries Association, a member of the Board of Directors of the Better Hearing Institute for six years, and past editor of the peer reviewed journal High Performance Hearing Solutions. He has conducted extensive research on the hearing-impaired population in the United States, is the author of close to 60 publications on the hearing-impaired population, and has spoken worldwide concerning his research.
Dr. Kochkin will review his MarkeTrak VII research. In MarkeTrak VII, he reviewed a 21 year trend in the hearing health industry. Newly covered topics include: the impact of untreated hearing loss on income and an exploration of America's 1.2 million hearing-impaired children and 23 million adults currently not using amplification.
Only 23% of people with hearing loss adopt a hearing solution. New users of hearing aids are 70 years of age. Yet 65% of people with hearing loss are below retirement age. In line with national efforts at the BHI, Dr. Kochkin will review what hearing health professionals can do to promote hearing healthcare in their communities to enhance the chances that more people with hearing loss, while in the prime of their life, seek their services?
Quality of Life for Individuals with Adult-Onset Hearing Loss
Carren J. Stika is a licensed clinical psychologist and Adjunct Assistant Professor/Instructor at San Diego State University. She is the former director of research for the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center for Persons who are Hard of Hearing or Late Deafened.
Dr. Stika is the principal investigator for a federally funded project to develop a quality of life measure for individuals with adult-onset hearing loss. She also serves as co-principal investigator for the Disability Rehabilitation Research project on Persons Aging with Hearing and Vision Loss, which is a collaborative project of Mississippi State University, San Diego State University, and the Helen Keller National Center.
More then 31 million Americans have some degree of hearing loss, and by the year 2030, it is predicted that 21 million more adults will join them. Despite the fact that hearing loss often has a profound influence on personal and social adjustment, employment status, and general well-being, few psychological measures currently exist to help assess these effects or evaluate intervention outcomes.
The enhancement of “quality of life” has been recognized recently as the essential purpose of health care and rehabilitation. Although there has been a dramatic growth in quality of life research in almost every area of medicine and rehabilitation, the evaluation of quality of life for individuals with hearing loss has not commanded much attention.