In 2019, The Lancet announced a commission to identify ways to reduce the global burden of hearing loss. This project team worked alongside the Lancet Commissioners to define and initiate research projects intending to inform health policy makers and decision modelers on the most effective and cost-effective strategies to reduce the global burden of hearing loss. The team identified evidence gaps in the current literature around: 1) health state utility values of treated and untreated hearing loss health states; 2) the global effects of hearing loss on human productivity and potential; and 3) the barriers and facilitators to hearing healthcare scale-up worldwide.

To fill these gaps, team members published analysis plans, drafted search strategies and began screening and data extraction for three systematic reviews of the literature. They additionally submitted an abstract to the Society for Medical Decision Making for the health state utility efforts. Over the next year, the team will finalize data and quality extraction from included studies, synthesize the data where appropriate and draft policy reports and published manuscript to inform the Lancet Commission.

As a parallel effort, members of the team worked to develop and validate one of the first U.S. decision models of hearing loss natural history, prevention, diagnosis and treatment across the lifespan. Team members collected setting-specific input data to inform the model and performed extensive calibration and validation exercises. These efforts led to an abstract submission to the Society for Medical Decision Making and a manuscript for peer-reviewed publication (in progress). Over the next year, the team will extend their model to three international settings: Chile, India and Nigeria. Team members also plan to perform cost-effectiveness analyses of hearing healthcare scale-up in these settings to better inform policy makers and the Lancet Commission.

Three undergraduate team members continued their work over the Summer of 2021 as Margolis Interns, and one graduate student team member was accepted into the Margolis Scholars program due to her accomplishments in health policy research.

Timing

Summer 2020 – Summer 2021

Team Outputs

Mohamed Diab, Susan Emmett, Debara Tucci, Blake Wilson, Kamaria Kaalund, Osondu Ogbuoji, Gillian Sanders Schmidler, Ethan Borre, Austin Ayers, and Gloria Zhang. 2021. Evidence gaps in economic analyses of hearing healthcare: A systematic review. EClinicalMedicine.

Global Effects of Hearing Loss on Human Productivity (published protocol for an ongoing systematic review)

Hearing Loss Untreated and Treated Health State Utilities (published protocol for an ongoing systematic review)

Barriers to, and evidence-based strategies for scaling up hearing healthcare interventions (published protocol for an ongoing systematic review)

This Team in the News

Six Ph.D. Graduates Who Leveraged Bass Connections for Their Doctoral Training

Senior Spotlight: Reflections from the Class of 2023

Videos

Bass Connections on the Global Burden of Hearing Loss (1)

Bass Connections on the Global Burden of Hearing Loss (2)

See related team, Evaluating Strategies to Reduce the Global Burden of Hearing Loss (2021-2022).