Hearing News Watch

MINNEAPOLIS—Former President George W. Bush recently joined the Starkey Hearing Foundation’s global effort to provide hearing care to people in need. Earlier this month, he personally worked with foundation professionals in providing customized hearing devices to 222 people in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The foundation was started more than 20 years ago by William Austin, founder of Starkey Hearing Technologies.

    CANNES, FRANCE–Bone-conduction devices are most often used to help people who want to hear better but aren’t good candidates for conventional air-conduction hearing aids. This technology, which has been around since the 1970s, is frequently prescribed to people with conductive or unilateral hearing loss or who have abnormalities of the outer ear that prevent them from wearing in-the-ear

AUCKLAND, NZ–Here’s a novel idea from Down Under. Lance Cairns, a legendary figure in cricket from New Zealand, is asking corporate and community leaders in his country to go deaf for a few hours. The idea, says Cairns, is that if people get a better understanding of what it’s like to have a hearing loss, they may be more motivated

WARRENVILLE, IL–Erin C. Schafer, PhD, a leading expert on the use of FM systems, is the 2013 recipient of Phonak LLC’s Cheryl DeConde Johnson Award for outstanding achievement in educational and pediatric audiology. Schafer is an associate professor in speech and hearing sciences at the University of North Texas. This annual award honors an audiologist working in a school program

By David H. Kirkwood NEW YORK—A number of financial research firms in the United States and abroad follow the hearing industry on behalf of their clients. These include individual investors as well as institutional investors such as pension and hedge fund managers. The latest company to turn its sights on hearing aids is Sanford C. Bernstein. Founded in 1967, Bernstein

BIRMINGHAM, UK—For 69 pence (about $1.15), parents in Great Britain can obtain a phone app that can be used with a smartphone or an iPad to help them assess their children’s hearing without taking them to an audiology clinic. The Early Ears app was developed by British scientists at Aston University in Birmingham, who say that it can offer parents

WASHINGTON, DC–The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has reached settlements with two wireless phone makers that its Enforcement Bureau found were failing to comply with FCC requirements to provide the public with hearing aid-compatible mobile phones. Under the consent decrees announced by the FCC on June 21, Airadigm Communications, dba Airfire Mobile, will make “a voluntary payment” of $260,000 to the

This post was updated on June 27. By David H. Kirkwood WASHINGTON, DC—The major professional organizations in audiology are more divided now than ever over which federal legislation will best support their members’ ability to serve Medicare beneficiaries. In past years, the American Academy of Audiology (AAA), the Academy of Doctors of Audiology (ADA), and, until 2011, the American Speech-Language-Hearing

NEW YORK—It will come as no surprise to anyone that children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy were found to be more likely to develop hearing loss at an early age than those born to non-smoking mothers. But this finding by researchers at New York University School of Medicine, will give pregnant women one more reason to kick the habit—at the

NEW ROCHELLE, NY—“Over the next decade, most of the variant genes responsible for deafness will be identified, and such knowledge will lead to the development of practical treatments.” So predict four scientists from the University of Miami writing in the June 2013 issue of Genetic Testing and Molecular Biomarkers (GTMB). In their paper, “Next-Generation Sequencing in Genetic Hearing Loss,” the