Hearing News Watch

WASHINGTON, DC–Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Olympia Snowe  (R-ME) reintroduced Hearing Aid Tax Credit bill (S. 905) on May 5, with eight original co-sponsors. Rep. Tom Latham (R-IA) and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) introduced a companion bill (H.R. 1479) in the House of Representatives in April. The Senate bill is unchanged from legislation in the 111th Congress, which attracted a

BRANCHBURG, NJ–At a time when the unemployment rate is unusually high, people with hearing loss are finding it especially difficult to find jobs. To help out, Bridges to Employment, a division of Alternatives, Inc., will host its 2011 Communication Expo this Saturday, May 7, at Raritan Valley Community College in Branchburg. The goal of this annual event is to raise

WASHINGTON, DC–The Better Hearing Institute (BHI) has unveiled its latest consumer e-Guide, Your Guide to Care and Maintenance of Hearing Aids. Authored by Drs. Ron Schow and Jeff Brockett, the comprehensive, 26-page e-Guide covers topics such as batteries, ear wax, ear mold/venting issues, moisture corrosion and intermittence, telephone use, feedback, static/noise, and prevention. The information is available on both the

CHICAGO–Hearing professionals have long been cautioning their patients not to use Q-tips or other small items  to clean their ear canals. Now a study by Henry Ford Hospital shows that their advice was well-founded.  The study, which was presented April 29 at the Combined Otolaryngology Spring Meeting in Chicago, found a direct association between the use of cotton swabs and

FOREST GROVE, OR—For more than a decade, there has been no place in Oregon where a prospective audiologist could get training in the field of her (or his) choice. That will change in fall 2012 when Pacific University’s College of Health Professions will begin training future audiologists through a clinical doctorate degree program (AuD) Ann Barr, vice-provost and executive dean

OKLAHOMA CITY, OK–While National Football League owners shut players out of training camps this spring, that doesn’t mean the professional gridders have been idle. Last month, a group of them spent a week in Rwanda and Uganda helping provide hearing aids to children in need. Their humanitarian trip was a project of Pros for Africa (PFA), a non-profit relief organization

NORMAL, IL–The Educational Audiology Association (EAA) and the Marion Downs Hearing Center in Boulder, CO, have teamed up in a relief effort focused on schools for the deaf and for mainstream deaf and hard-of hearing students in areas of Japan recently  devastated by  earthquake and tsunami. A secure site for monetary donations has been established at Marion Downs Hearing Center

DeKALB, IL–Ross J. Roeser, PhD, the founder and long-time former executive director of the Callier Hearing and Speech Center in Dallas, has received the Northern Illinois University College of Health and Human Sciences Outstanding Alumni Award for 2011. Roeser, who earned his MA in audiology from NIU in 1967, is currently a chaired professor at the University of Texas, Dallas/

MEMPHIS, TN–Robyn Cox, PhD, a prominent professor of audiology at the University of Memphis, has been awarded a  5-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to research the effectiveness of hearing aids. Cox will recruit subjects to use hearing aids in the school’s laboratory and in their daily lives while measuring their performance with different levels of

SARASOTA, FL–Two local restaurants in this Gulf Coast city are the first in the nation to offer a tabletop sound system that sends voices from a microphone directly into a hearing aid or cochlear implant, according to Edward F. Ogiba, president of the Hearing Loss Association of Sarasota. The restaurants–Caragiulo’s and Owens Fish Camp–are both owned by Paul Caragiulo, who