Sounding Joy: Christy Vogel’s Quest to Make Hearing Accessible for Every Child

Welcome to this week in Hearing. I’m Gael Hannan, hearing health advocate and author of Hear & Beyond Live Skillfully with Hearing Loss, with Shari Eberts. This week, we are talking about joy. Our guest is Christy Vogel. She is a passionate advocate for people with hearing loss, especially those who struggle to afford the technology that we all need, because this was her story, too. A few years ago, Christy realized that her hearing loss journey was also a mission, and she started a nonprofit called Sounding Joy that provides hearing aids to children whose families can’t afford them. But let’s talk to her. Christy, welcome. Thank you so much, Gael. It is such a pleasure to be here. Oh, yes, it’s such a pleasure to have you with us, because I’m very excited about what we’re going to talk about. But before we talk about joy, could you tell me and our people who are listening and watching about your early formative years with hearing loss? Well, I was born with nerve deafness. And it’s something that is hereditary, especially with my family. And so there were a lot of people in my family growing up who had nerve deafness, and were hard of hearing. Some of us wore hearing aids, others did not. So when my hearing was actually detected as having a hearing loss, with me being hearing impaired, it wasn’t really truly detected until I was in the 6th grade. And so at that point, so I had failed a hearing test within the school. And so what happened then was, well, you know, that wasn’t a big shock just because our family did have it was inherited, and that was kind of typical for our family. But also, I don’t think it was taken as seriously because I didn’t lose my hearing overnight like a lot of people do. So it wasn’t like one day Christy woke up and all of a sudden she couldn’t hear. This was always the way Christy was. Christy was probably more hard of listening, it was thought of, than hard of hearing because I would cut up in class and whatever else. Well, I wasn’t hearing much, and I was bored. So that way, because of that, I would talk to other children and get all of us in trouble. So when that news was stated by the hearing specialists when I was in the 6th grade it was listened to, certainly, but I don’t think the emphasis or understanding of what that actually meant was as big of a deal or didn’t create as much. Impact because of my family’s history of hearing loss. So because of that and because hearing aids were so expensive, they still are they weren’t covered by insurance back then. They still, in very rare cases are covered by insurance these days, even for children. I did not go, I did not receive my hearing aids, get my hearing aids until I was almost 27 years old. So a life of going through all of my elementary school years, junior high, middle school, junior high, high school, college years, without hearing in the classroom was a major impact on my life and a major impact on how I thought of myself as an individual. I grew up thinking that I wasn’t as smart as my friends. I quit asking questions in the classroom because usually those questions had just been answered by the teacher or asked by a student. And so when I would ask those questions a lot of eye rolls would go on with both the teachers and the students as well. So at that point, you finally just quit asking, which prompted me to fall farther and farther behind in school. And in high school, I almost dropped out. You know, you mentioned that first of all, Christy Vogel, that is my life, so a large part of it. But you mentioned that hearing loss was hereditary in your family. And it’s not always with hereditary with nerve deafness, but it can be. And obviously it is in your case. But the news that you had hearing loss didn’t come as a shock because everyone or many people in your family had it. Still, knowing that you still felt ‘lesser than’ you still felt not as bright as your friend, even knowing that, the answer was that the issue was hearing loss. That’s a great question. So you would think that being presented with Christy, you are hearing impaired. Christy, you taught yourself to read lips. That I would apply that knowledge to. Oh, maybe I am smart, I’m just not hearing. And I never put those two things together. I just, I was already on the track of I’m not as smart as my friends are. And when I was told that I was hearing impaired as a 6th grader, as an eleven year old, I really didn’t believe it because I thought, well, I’m not missing anything because you truly don’t understand what you’re missing until those hearing aids go in your ears. So I didn’t realize what I was missing until I was 27 years old and looked back and said, oh my gosh. And then I was also realizing that people thought I was aloof, they thought that I was moody, which I am, anything but even if I’m in a bad mood. Still wish you a good morning. Yeah. You know, that’s. That is fascinating because you clearly judge smart by a certain thing. Your friends were smart because they, you know, didn’t ask the same questions that you did, and they got stuff. So when we’re younger, what is smart? What is it smart is being. Getting everything and you weren’t getting it. Yeah, I totally get that. The first hearing aids, I was 21, and I didn’t get them for a different reason. My hearing loss was mild as a child, and they didn’t think that the body aids would they thought it would harm my residual hearing, so. Didn’t get them. Didn’t get them until I was 21. And, oh, my gosh, life changing. Life was really loud, but. And you said something. I had nothing realized what. I had not realized how hard of hearing I really was, how much I was actually missing. But it was also a go forward point in my life. Tell us about when you got your first hearing aid. What was it like for you? So, like you said, it was very loud. And technology, fortunately, has come a long way. And I’ve been wearing them almost 30 years, I guess I would say. So even in this last 30 years, technology has gotten so much better that it’s filtering out the background noise and that kind of thing and really focusing on what you want to hear. So back then, it just amplified everything. I like to use the example of taking a staticky radio station and turning it up louder to hear it better, you just get louder static. And so it was a huge adjustment for me. I remember being in a cubicle where the person next to me was crumpling up a piece of paper, and I about strangled them because that crumpling of the paper was so loud and just shot through my. Through my head. And I’m sure you went through the very same thing. So But there were the realizations there that, wow, I wasn’t hearing like I thought I was. Wow, buttons do beep when you. When you press them. Wow birds do really sing. And I can finally hear that kind of thing. So it was life changing, for sure. I was doing better in the job that I was doing, because I could finally hear people in conferences around the conference room table when I was talking to clients face to face. I was actually able to hear what their needs were, so I was able to provide a better solution. So things change fairly quickly within that regard. But at the same time, I had almost 27 years of wiring in my brain still saying that, Christy, you’re slow. You’re not smart enough. You’ll, you know, you can. You can hang in there and try, but you’re not going to be one of the smart ones. And so, as much as I would like to say. As soon as I put those hearing aids in, I put two and two together and realized, wow, I really am smart. And maybe I’m even smarter than most because I was able to make my way through high school and college, and it took me a lot longer than most. It took me five years to get my associate’s degree, but I did it, hearing less than half of what was taught in the classroom. Those thoughts did not come together until very recently in my life. So when I got my hearing aids, it was definitely a positive, it was a benefit, it was a life changing experience for me. But there was still a lot of that rewiring that had to go on in my brain to tell me that I am worthy and I can do the things that I set my mind to as long as I work hard to do it. You know, that really speaks to dealing with, essentially, with the trauma of living with a hearing loss and trauma maybe with a small t. Its something I’ve come to realize how the impact of living with hearing loss has really affected me, looking back, and that there was some trauma attached to that. So, I mean, that fascinating to hear that and something I would love to talk about another time. So I’m really keen to hear about how you came to sounding joy. Can you tell us about what it is and first of all, and how you got there? So how I got there it was a lifelong journey. Apparently. It was my purpose, why I was put on this planet. Gael. It just took me about 50 years to figure it out. So but I did finally figure it out. So about six, seven years ago, my brother, my oldest brother Frank, who is also hearing impaired, he didn’t need hearing aids until he was an adult. He donated his used hearing aids to our cousin Steve, who never, never got hearing aids. And Steve was an adult, and just never really bothered with hearing aids. He saw his father and my grandfather talking really loud and yelling at each other, and they both had hearing aids. They weren’t good ones, but they both had them. And his idea of hearing aids was, you’re going to yell at each other anyway, so why even try? So my brother Frank talked my cousin Steve into wearing my brother’s hearing aids. And he, just like us, he had no idea how much he was missing. So it really changed his life. That very first day, he put those hearing aids in. So at that time, I thought, gosh, why isn’t there some kind of a charity available to give people their use hearing aids? Because they are so expensive and not covered by. Insurance. So it was always just an idea in my head. One day, when I’ve got enough money, when I’ve got the resources, maybe when I retire, I will start something like this. Well, fast forward a couple years later. So my cousin Steve passed away. Unfortunately he was an alcoholic. He was addicted to alcohol. And this happened very early on in his life, and it completely changed his life and ultimately took his life. Well, when I first started doing research on hearing loss and the effects of hearing loss on children who don’t get their hearing aids, like all of us, I found that children who don’t get those hearing aids are more than twice as likely to become addicted to drugs and alcohol. When I heard that, and I applied that to, my, gosh, that’s what happened to Steve. And it also happened to another one of my cousins who didn’t get her hearing aids. Right there in my tracks, I stopped and said, this has to happen now, because it was then I realized that if I don’t start trying this, children will keep dying of addiction. Then when I dug a little bit more, I found out that children who don’t get their hearing aids are more than five times as likely to attempt suicide. So there was no turning back. I had to figure it out. I had no idea what I was doing. I was still running my marketing agency by day. Didn’t have the time, resources, the cash to do it, but I had to do it because kids were dying. So that was the beginning of it, of just saying, I’m burning the boats. I’m going to get this done. I don’t know how. And I just started talking to people. I started talking to people and creating that awareness, especially around addiction and the suicide attempts. And what shocked me is most people have never heard these stats, even audiologists and ENTs that we partner with. When I would share this information with them they were in shock. So there needs to be more awareness surrounding that, as well as the awareness of insurance not covering the hearing aids, even for children. Now, Medicaid will cover it. So if families are on Medicaid, then they will get their hearing aids. But lower income families and even middle income families who can’t afford to write a check for $7,000 on a moment’s notice need the help to get those hearing aids. That is amazing. And so the concept came to you, and it’s called Sounding Joy. Yes. Whereabouts are you, where does your work what geographical area does it cover? So I’m speaking to you from downtown St. Petersburg, Florida. And we are currently serving families, serving children in the Pinellas county school districts and Hillsborough county school districts. Hillsborough county is actually the largest school district in the country, and that is all. So we’re building the platform, we’re making it scalable. Our board of directors are all entrepreneurs, so we’re used to, including myself, and so we’re used to building it right the first time, to make it scalable so that we can take this globally. And so we are in a very good position to be doing that. Its happening actually a lot faster than I ever dreamed that it would be, because when we tell the story, when we’re sharing these factoids, people want to know, how can we help? And so Rotary Club International is very interested in helping us out and taking this globally as well. We’re going to do it. It’s just a question of when and we’re going to make it happen. This is amazing. And I salute you. This is fantastic. What would you say, like, you talk about this being scalable, but what would you say to the people who are watching, advocates like yourself and myself and the different parts of not only the United States, but Canada, where I am, and other parts of the world, what would you, how would they go about doing something like this or somehow becoming connected with you? So the first step that I took is taking a look at what made sense logistically, with getting access to the children who had a hearing need and a possible financial need, as opposed to putting up a website and just sending everybody there. We’re a small and mighty team, so we didn’t have the staff to be able to talk to everyone who went to the website to say, hey, my child needs hearing aids. Were in financial need. That just was not scalable for us. So what we did instead was we partnered with the school district audiologist. So they are our people on the ground. They are our feeders. They’re the ones that are screening the children in kindergarten, third grade and 6th grade in the public school system. And they’re the ones saying to us, here’s a child in need that needs a hearing aid and there’s possible financial need, and then we take it from there. And that really streamlines the process. So that would be my number one recommendation to start starting something like this is number one talking to the school audiologist and people who are audiologists. I know I’m making a generalization, but they are angels. Their hearts are in it. They go to school almost as long as ENTs do, and they get paid, I’m just guessing half the salary. Their hearts are in it. They really want to help. So if they understand that you are coming to them to get information to possibly help the children that they’re not able to help, because that’s very frustrating to them when they’re recommending to the parent, your child needs a hearing aid, and they see that child year after year after year not getting that hearing aid, that’s very upsetting to them. And so when they see a resource like ours coming to them, saying, how can we help? The first question to them is, is there a need? Do you see children and do you have a place to be able to refer them to so that they get those hearing aids? In the Tampa Bay area, there are organizations, but they’re not keeping up with the demand. So when we came to them, they said, yes, this is something that is absolutely needed in the Bay Area, and how can we help? So they pretty much helped us build the program based on how can we streamline this? What other medical professionals need to be involved? How do we set up the financial aid process? And they were meeting with me on a regular basis from two counties. These are people that are already overworked. They don’t have enough bandwidth in order to see everyone they need to see. Yet they were spending time with me twice a month to hold my hand and help us build this organization in a way that was truly going to help the children and the families who were in need. That is amazing. And amazing is such a, an overused word I keep saying. I’m not going to keep saying that word, amazing, but it is amazing. I love that. I love that word. So you can use it. I do, too. It’s my fallback word. What about the hearing care? There’s two questions I want to ask. One is, where do you get the financial resources to provide the hearing aids? And the second one is where are your hearing care providers? Do they volunteer to actually fit these hearing aids on these children? So what’s interesting? Well, I’ll answer your first question first with how are we paying for the hearing aids? So we have a number of ways that we get dollars to pay for hearing aids. First of all, we work with One Source Hearing who is a buying resource for audiology offices and ENT offices buying hearing aids. And once they heard what we were doing, they looked at us and said, said, we’re going to give you the best volume discount we possibly can. So we tend to pay about 50% less than the most people would pay for those hearing aids. So now we can buy twice as many hearing aids. And then as far as the funding coming through, we are receiving grants on a regular basis, which I am so excited about because we are a fairly new. We’ve just been around a couple of years, so we are a fairly new 501c3, but we are getting the attention of grants and receiving those. We have a couple of fundraisers every year. We have a golf tournament that does very well, and then we have an upcoming gala that’s coming up, along with a silent auction, which is really cool because we have some of our kiddos, which are the kids that we fit with hearing aids. They’re going to be doing some artwork at the gala, and then we’re going to silent auction off their artwork, which we’re all very excited about. And then also there are opportunities with wonderful organizations. One for example, is called 100 Women Who Care. And so what they do is they have three different organizations. Nonprofits come in and speak and tell their story. And then within 1 hour, these 100 plus women vote on who had the most compelling story, compelling need. And then that person or that organization receives anywhere from $10k to $20,000 in one evening. So we’ve been very blessed to be a part of a few of those organizations as well. So and, of course, we’ve got our donors that are hearing the story and just feeling compelled to send money to soundingjoy.org. and we’re doing great things with those dollars, for sure. So it’s really interesting. I’m getting such an education on all of this. So, depending on the area in the school district that you’re working with, will depend on the need for private hearing providers. So, in Pinellas county school system, if the child was already in the database of the Pinellas county school audiologist, then those school audiologists can just tell us what type of hearing aids they need. They order them. We pay the invoice, and the school audiologists are able to fit and program for the child. And everybody’s good. On the Hillsborough county side, they have less bandwidth, again, the largest school system in the country. And so with them, they refer the child and the family to us. And then from there, they need to be seen by a private ENT to write off and say, yes, this is a hearing need that can be helped by a hearing aid. And it’s not some kind of a cancerous tumor on the cochlea. It’s something that can be fixed by hearing aid. So then once they sign off on that, then the private audiologist that usually works with that ENT is able to order, program those hearing aids, and then we’re off to the races. So, therefore, we are currently partnering with a children’s ENT practice. called Tampa children’s ENT in Tampa, who is offering their services to us pro bono, and they are such a blessing to work with. And we’re all doing high fives every week when we’re fitting new hearing aids with children. So it’s fantastic. People who are watching Christy is talking about very specific geographical regions, but this can be replicated this story, this organization, these providers can exist everywhere. So I think that’s something that’s really coming out of this discussion with you as well as in your area, what you’re doing. It’s amazing. Yeah congratulations congratulations on what you do. So I think that’s a really high point for us to stop here. I think what we’re going to do, Christy we’ll post your organization’s name and some other information, and perhaps even you can make available to us some of the research that you said was available. If you have a couple of specific studies, if you could send those to me. And I’m saying this out loud as part of the podcast because I think it’s something that people need to understand and read about and know and do something about it. So, Christy Vogel, thank you so much for what you do on top of everything else that you do in your life. And it’s been a pleasure to meet you, and I hope that our paths may cross again because I’d love to do some work with you. So, is there anything you’d like to sort of end up saying? Well, I welcome the opportunity to work with you and have more follow up conversations. And thank you for what you do, for spreading the word and spreading the awareness, because once everyone is absolutely aware of the addiction and the suicide attempt stats, then people are going to be looking at this completely differently. And also just spreading the word and reducing the stigma of wearing hearing aids. Hearing aid technology is pretty cool, so if you’re able to wear a hearing aid, you’re probably in better shape than those not wearing it by listening to your phone without pulling up your phone, being able to stream music without, without those earbuds. So you’re in better shape, in my opinion. All right, well, thank you very much, and until the next time. Bye. Thank you, bye.