Hearing Loss And Healthy Aging
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Hearing Health Care for Adults
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
language: en
Publisher: National Academies Press
Release Date: 2016-10-06
The loss of hearing - be it gradual or acute, mild or severe, present since birth or acquired in older age - can have significant effects on one's communication abilities, quality of life, social participation, and health. Despite this, many people with hearing loss do not seek or receive hearing health care. The reasons are numerous, complex, and often interconnected. For some, hearing health care is not affordable. For others, the appropriate services are difficult to access, or individuals do not know how or where to access them. Others may not want to deal with the stigma that they and society may associate with needing hearing health care and obtaining that care. Still others do not recognize they need hearing health care, as hearing loss is an invisible health condition that often worsens gradually over time. In the United States, an estimated 30 million individuals (12.7 percent of Americans ages 12 years or older) have hearing loss. Globally, hearing loss has been identified as the fifth leading cause of years lived with disability. Successful hearing health care enables individuals with hearing loss to have the freedom to communicate in their environments in ways that are culturally appropriate and that preserve their dignity and function. Hearing Health Care for Adults focuses on improving the accessibility and affordability of hearing health care for adults of all ages. This study examines the hearing health care system, with a focus on non-surgical technologies and services, and offers recommendations for improving access to, the affordability of, and the quality of hearing health care for adults of all ages.
Hearing Loss and Healthy Aging
Author: National Research Council
language: en
Publisher: National Academies Press
Release Date: 2014-07-30
Being able to communicate is a cornerstone of healthy aging. People need to make themselves understood and to understand others to remain cognitively and socially engaged with families, friends, and other individuals. When they are unable to communicate, people with hearing impairments can become socially isolated, and social isolation can be an important driver of morbidity and mortality in older adults. Despite the critical importance of communication, many older adults have hearing loss that interferes with their social interactions and enjoyment of life. People may turn up the volume on their televisions or stereos, miss words in a conversation, go to fewer public places where it is difficult to hear, or worry about missing an alarm or notification. In other cases, hearing loss is much more severe, and people may retreat into a hard-to-reach shell. Yet fewer than one in seven older Americans with hearing loss use hearing aids, despite rapidly advancing technologies and innovative approaches to hearing health care. In addition, there may not be an adequate number of professionals trained to address the growing need for hearing health care for older adults. Further, Medicare does not cover routine hearing exams, hearing aids, or exams for fitting hearing aids, which can be prohibitively expensive for many older adults. Hearing Loss and Healthy Aging is the summary of a workshop convened by the Forum on Aging, Disability, and Independence in January 2014 on age-related hearing loss. Researchers, advocates, policy makers, entrepreneurs, regulators, and others discussed this pressing social and public health issue. This report examines the ways in which age-related hearing loss affects healthy aging, and how the spectrum of public and private stakeholders can work together to address hearing loss in older adults as a public health issue.
Healthy Aging
This book highlights both biomedical and psychosocial interventions, including lifestyle changes that promote healthy aging. The text begins with an introduction to the principles of disease prevention and health promotion with an emphasis on the impact of age on life expectancy, disease and disability. Written by experts who have an interest in healthy aging, the text highlights steps that patients and their healthcare providers can take to promote healthy aging. There is an emphasis on maintaining function and preventing disability with increasing age. Common biomedical interventions including exercise, nutrition, sleep and cancer prevention are addressed in detail. The text then shifts to address the psychosocial determinant of healthy aging including, housing, relationships, intimacy, work and spirituality. The text then outlines steps that healthcare systems and public policy agencies should adopt to promote healthy aging, both for those who are older now and for those who will be older in the future. Healthy Aging is an important resource for those working with older patients, including geriatricians, family medicine physicians, nurses, gerontologists, students, public health administrators, and all other medical professionals.