Improving Community Hearing Health and Equity

Health Care Access

Expand existing project, program, or initiative

Whether preparing for neurosurgery, experiencing hearing loss for the first time, or learning to manage a diagnosis, sensorineural hearing loss, conductive hearing loss and mixed hearing loss patients and their families face significant medical stressors. These stressors can negatively affect mental health and emotional well-being with lifelong implications. The social isolation and exclusion that often stem from hearing loss are linked to higher rates of depression in the deaf and hard-of-hearing communities. Further, the average annual income of those with hearing loss is $20,000 less compared to their normal-hearing counterparts. Hearing loss also correlates to learning and achievement gaps in youth and research shows that 25-35% of children with hearing loss are at risk of falling at least one grade level behind. On average, more than 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents, families who may be unprepared for the challenges of navigating their child's medical conditions.

HIF provides our patients and families wrap-around patient-centered services through our Patient Education and Well-Being Program. Alongside our quality hearing-related disorder treatment and hearing loss prevention care, patients of all ages receive comprehensive resources, compassionate guidance, mental health support, whole family education and counseling, advocacy training and referrals in a supportive one-on-one setting, free of charge. We partner with hospitals, physicians and school districts and have curated a robust referral system and network of local partnerships and community resources to ensure patients and families have affordable access to any recommended services that are not provided in-house. The program assists our most vulnerable patients, those who are on Medi-Cal or CCS insurance, with often life-changing services. HIF recently launched a Hearing Aid Access Project (HAAP) to provide free hearing testing, hearing aids, hearing aid fittings, and bilingual education on hearing aid use and care. Hearing aids often cost upwards of $7,000 and are usually uncovered by insurance. HAAP assists patients who are unable to afford the hearing aids they need. We expect the number of patients and their families served by the HIF patient support services program to double in 2023, as we grow our capacity and prepare to extend programming to our HAAP patients. To extend quality care and services to all in need, HIF must increase our program budget.

Without early hearing loss detection and intervention, delays in language development increase exponentially. Despite a wealth of resources in L.A., there remains a lack of available centers to serve its youngest and most vulnerable patients in a timely way. Expanded HIF care will reduce wait time for diagnostic tests and services. With additional funding, HIF can provide more of Los Angeles' underinsured or low-income patients hearing devices through HAAP, free of charge. Most hearing health facilities do not offer the wrap-around services HIF provides. We guide families and navigate the hearing health system with them to utilize the resources available to them. Increasing HIF's patient services will improve access to and education for underserved communities (language or income), as well as patient outcomes in listening and spoken language, fluency and well-being. With early intervention, we can positively affect a lifetime of suffering from Adverse Childhood Events (ACES).

HIF's effectiveness can be measured qualitatively by our patient and family services' successes, which may be as simple as scheduling a referral appointment the parent was unable to or as significant as helping a newborn get needed medical hearing health treatment. We carefully track the number and types of services provided to each of our patients and their families and are implementing a survey to better understand the degree of benefit and satisfaction derived from the program. It will provide an additional measure of impact and allow us to incorporate feedback as we continuously look to strengthen our patient services program. Through patient feedback received to date, HIF increased the number of bilingual services and resources provided through the program to increase its accessibility. HAAP's performance is measured by the number of patients screened, hearing aids fittings performed, the number of hearing aids donated, and the number of follow-up audiological services provided.