May is Better Hearing and Speech Month; state says 700,000 Kentuckians have some degree of hearing loss; here are signs

From a Commonwealth of Kentucky press release

With approximately 15% of American adults reporting difficulty hearing, state officials are encouraging people to learn the signs of hearing loss—and to seek care during Better Hearing and Speech Month in May.

“We know that more than 700,000 Kentuckians of all ages are experiencing some degree of hearing loss. We encourage people to have a professional check their hearing and also to protect their hearing from loud noises,” Gov. Andy Beshear said.

Signs of hearing loss in adults include the following:

• Difficulty following conversations
• Difficulty hearing in noisy environments
• Hearing ringing, roaring or beeping in one or both ears
• Failure to respond to spoken words
• Muffled hearing
• Constant frustration hearing speech and other sounds
• Avoidance of conversation

“Our hearing is key to so many aspects of our lives, but it’s something that many people undervalue until they are having severe hearing difficulties,” said Virginia Moore, executive director of the the Kentucky Commission on the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. “Even then, some people wait years to receive treatment, if ever. This is despite the fact that audiologists can help people in many different ways.

“Hearing loss is much more than a simple nuisance. Left unaddressed, it can affect us in a variety of ways, including increased risk for physical danger such as falling or missing warning signals like a fire alarm; mental health problems, including social isolation and depression; and cognitive decline, including earlier onset of dementia. Our personal relationships, career success and health-care costs can be affected as well.”

As a first step, Moore urged anyone concerned about their own hearing or that of a loved one to seek an evaluation from a certified audiologist. Private insurance, Medicaid and Medicare generally cover such evaluations. People can take this step even if they think they cannot afford hearing aids or other hearing services. Audiologists can advise people on ways to make hearing aids more affordable. In addition, various organizations offer financial assistance.

Aside from hearing aids, audiologists can identify other ways to improve a person’s listening and communication skills. They also can help families support loved ones affected by hearing loss.

If you are experiencing any of the signs above or if you think you have hearing loss, see your doctor or a licensed audiologist to assess the degree of your hearing loss, treat it and develop a plan to prevent further loss. There are several assistive technologies available through KCDHH’s Telecommunications Access Program, which can help you stay connected to emergency information and health-care providers. For more information, visit the KCDHH website.

This article was written and published several days before the May 6 death of KCDHH Executive Diretcor Virginia Moore.

UK's research-based comic book helps readers understand and fight the use of electronic cigarettes by teens and young adults

By Alicia Gregory

University of Kentucky

A team at the University of Kentucky has published a research-based comic book to fight use of electronic cigarettes by young adults.

“In the world that we live in right now, there is a lot of science misinformation, and a lot of that is just a communication flaw. The science is correct. The ideas are correct. The intent is correct. The messaging is not,” said Joel Thompson, Ph.D., research development director for UK's Center for Clinical and Translational Science, which fostered the project.

In August 2019, the CCTS launched its Science Communication Challenge, inviting investigators to develop and pitch a comic-book concept to tell the story of their research. That gave Melinda Ickes an idea. 

“I thought, I really don't know if this is a good fit for me, but hey, why not?” said Ickes, an associate professor and director of graduate studies in the UK College of Education's Department of Kinesiology and Health Promotion. She is also faculty associate and co-director of the Tobacco Policy Research Program of the College of Nursing BREATHE (Bridging Research Efforts and Advocacy Toward Healthy Environments) project, that the was the basis for her winning idea.

Top of comic book cover, showing students as puppets of
an electronic cigarette; story title is "The Villainous Vape"

The research study she chose to pitch, titled “Prevalence and reasons for Juul use among college students,” was published in the American Journal of College Health in 2019. “We really wanted to understand why students were using and what were the risk factors to initiate use and continue use of e-cigarettes.” She hoped to address rampant misinformation among young people about e-cigarette use.

Bryan Sanders, who does a variety of graphic design projects for the CCTS Participant Recruitment Services unit, became the main artist on the project. His colleague Ashley Hall said, “I knew if anyone could take this scientific jargon, distill it down and turn it into something that was easier to understand, it was certainly him.”

Sanders is a comic artist and filmmaker on the side. In the past eight years, he’s created 20 comic books, with a total run of 5,000 copies. He has been a frequent participant in the Lexington Comic & Toy Con, to be held Sept. 9-12, and will be in Booth 1038 with copies of the comic book.

“If one person reads this book, puts down the comic and then puts down their e-cigarette, that’s a plus-one in my book.”

Ickes says she hopes the comic will promote non-judgmental discussion of e-cigarette use across all ages, and she wants to develop curriculum and programming around the comic book. “Developing this comic really helped me see how we can talk about research in a different way, how we can engage young people. If we keep pushing the envelope, as the CCTS is helping us do, we're going to reach more people across Kentucky and even beyond.”

TVs in public places need closed captioning turned on, especially during breaking news, to help the deaf or hard of hearing

By Melissa Patrick
Kentucky Health News

For the nearly 700,000 Kentuckians who are deaf or hard of hearing, breaking news stories on television, like those about the new coronavirus, are often only pictures on a screen, The fix for this problem is sometimes as easy as turning on the closed captioning option on the remote, especially in public venues.

Closed-caption symbol
(Image from Wikipedia)

Closed captioning displays the audio portion of a television program as text on the TV screen for those who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. It can be accessed through the television's remote.

Virginia Moore, executive director of the Kentucky Commission on the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, said to alleviate misinformation and fear, it is important to make sure information about the cornavirus and other breaking news is being communicated clearly, including to those who are deaf or hard of hearing.

"Just imagine not being able to get the correct information and how that escalates fear," she said.

Moore said public entities, like airports, doctor's offices and restaurants need to do their part to make sure they are using closed captioning if they have a public TV, especially if there is breaking news.

"If they have breaking news, that needs to be captioned," she said. "It's very easy. It's a button on your remote; push that button, have the captioning available so that those individuals with a hearing loss will be able to see the important information coming across, just like everyone else who is sitting there." 

Virginia Moore is the sign-language interpreter at Gov. Andy
Beshear's coronavirus press conferences. (WKRC image) 

And while hearing loss is often associated with aging, Moore said loud music and listening to music at unsafe volumes with ear buds has resulted in one in five American teens experiencing some type of hearing loss.

Moore pointed to WDRB-TV in Louisville as a great example of a station that offers real-time closed captioning. She said WDRB has been able to offer this service because of its partnership with Norton Healthcare, which underwrites the cost.

Because real-time captioning can be costly, Moore encouraged stations across the state to seek out similar partnerships, calling it a "win-win,"  since the station gets more devoted viewers and the partner gets advertising.

It's important to note that while some stations may have closed captioning, it is sometimes limited to whatever is on their scripts and does not include anything that is ad-libbed, and some stations may not offer any captioning for live broadcasts.

Another reason to not ignore hearing loss: Study shows it will likely cost you more in health-care expenses

Untreated hearing loss in older adults affects more than just their ability to communicate. It can also increase their health-care expenses.

Medical News Today photo

A Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study found that older adults with untreated hearing loss pay an average of 46 percent more -- or $22,434 more -- for health care over a decade, compared to those who have no hearing loss.

“Knowing that untreated hearing loss dramatically drives up health-care utilization and costs will hopefully be a call to action among health systems and insurers to find ways to better serve these patients,” lead author Nicholas Reed said in a news release.

Reed is a member of the core faculty of the Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health at the Bloomberg School and an instructor of audiology in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

The study, published in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, saw differences as early as two years after diagnosis, with the patients who had untreated hearing loss showing a 26 percent increase in total health-care costs, more than half the difference found after 10 years. Of the 46 percent increase after 10 years, an average $20,403 of it was incurred by the patient's health insurer and $2,030 by the patient in out-of-pocket costs, the study found.

The findings "add to a growing body of research from Johns Hopkins and elsewhere showing the detriments of untreated hearing loss, which include a higher risk of dementia and cognitive decline, falls, depression and lower quality of life," says the release. It notes that hearing loss affects 38 million Americans, a number that’s expected to double by 2060. One in three Americans between 65 and 74 has hearing loss, and two-thirds of adults 70 and older have a clinically significant loss.

Nearly 700,000 Kentuckians have hearing loss, or about 16 percent of the commonwealth's citizens, according to the Kentucky Commission on the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Click here to see how many people in your county have hearing loss.

How the study was done, and what might be done in response

Using data from OptumLabs Data Warehouse, the researchers identified more than 77,000 patients with likely age-related untreated hearing loss, excluding those who used a hearing aid or whose hearing loss was secondary to another condition.

An in-depth analysis found that after 10 years, "Patients with untreated hearing loss experienced about 50 percent more hospital stays, had about a 44 percent higher risk for hospital readmission within 30 days, were 17 percent more likely to have an emergency department visit and had about 52 more outpatient visits compared to those without hearing loss," the release says. And of the extra $22,434 in total health care costs, only about $600 was due solely to hearing loss-related care.

The study did not indicate why untreated hearing loss drives up health-care costs, but the release notes that a companion paper using the same data found that hearing loss is independently associated with "significantly greater" incidence of disease.

"For example, compared to those without hearing loss, those with untreated hearing loss had 3.2 more dementia diagnoses, 3.6 more falls and 6.9 more depression diagnoses per 100 people over 10 years.
Over 10 years, those with untreated hearing loss had an estimated 50 percent greater risk of dementia, 40 percent greater risk of depression, and almost 30 percent higher risk for falls compared to those without hearing loss," says the release.

“We don’t yet know if treating hearing loss could help prevent these problems,” Jennifer A. Deal, co-author and assistant scientist in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Epidemiology, said in the release. “But it’s important for us to figure out, because over two-thirds of adults age 70 years and older have clinically significant hearing loss that may impact everyday quality of life."

Deal also said poor communication could play a role in the higher costs for patients with hearing loss, noting that they may have trouble communicating their symptoms or hearing what their provider is saying about their care. One solution, she said, is increased access to "amplification devices," which the release notes will become more readily available in 2020, when a federal law authorizing certain types of over-the-counter hearing aids will go into effect.

The study was done in collaboration with AARP, the University of California San Francisco, and OptumLabs.

Half of parents in poll admit to indulging in risky behavior of using phone and texting while driving with children in the car

Alamy Stock Photo

About half of Americans in a survey said they talk on cell phones while driving with children aged 4 to 10. Worse yet, a third said they read text messages, a fourth of them sent such messages, and one out of seven said they used social media while driving with children.

"The study also found a correlation between cell phone use while children were in the car and other risky driving behaviors, such as not wearing a seat belt and driving under the influence of alcohol whether or not children were present in the car," said a press release from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, which did the research with the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. It was published in the Journal of Pediatrics.

The study was conducted online among 760 adults in 47 U.S. states who said they were a parent or routine caregiver of a child between the ages of 4 and 10, and had driven their oldest child between those ages at least six times in the preceding three months. The poll found that 52.2 percent of parents had talked on a hands-free phone while driving with a young child in the car, while 47 percent had done so with a hand-held phone. It also found that 33.7 percent read text messages, 26.7 percent sent text messages, and 13.7 percent reported using social media while driving with children.

"The results from this research reinforce that risky driving behaviors rarely occur in isolation, and lay the groundwork for interventions and education specifically aimed at  parents who drive with young children in their cars," said lead author Catherine McDonald, of the hospital's Center for Injury Research and Prevention and the university's Community Health Department.

McDonald said doctors need to warn parents about such risky behaviors. "This type of education is especially pivotal today, as in-vehicle technology is rapidly changing and there is increased – and seemingly constant – reliability on cell phones," she said. "However, it is also important to note that even parents who did not engage in risky behaviors, such as not wearing a seat belt as a driver or driving under the influence of alcohol, still used their cell phones while driving."

The more teenagers use smartphones, the less happy they are

NPR photo

New research shows that teenagers who spend a large amount of time on their smartphones are more likely to be unhappy, Melissa Healy reports for the Los Angeles Times.

The study, by researchers at San Diego State University and the University of Georgia, looked at data from the "Monitoring the Future" survey of more than 1 million eighth, 10th and 12 graders across the U.S to determine "why a decades-long rise in happiness and satisfaction among U.S. teens suddenly shifted course in 2012 and declined sharply over the next four years," Healy writes.

She notes that in 2012, half of U.S. adults and roughly 37 percent of teens owned a smartphone, and by 2016 that number had increased to 77 percent for adults and at least 73 percent for teens.

The study, published in the journal Emotion, "found that between 1991 and 2016, adolescents who spent more time on electronic communication and screens — social media, texting, electronic games, the internet ( and even television) — were less happy, less satisfied with their lives and had lower self-esteem," Healy writes. "By contrast, adolescents who spent more time on non-screen activities had higher psychological well-being. They tended to profess greater happiness, higher self-esteem and more satisfaction with their lives."

The pattern was "particularly clear" among eighth and 10th graders, the researchers wrote: "Every non-screen activity was correlated with greater happiness, and every screen activity was correlated with less happiness."

Kentucky YRBS 2007-2017 graph

The biannual Kentucky Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that in 2007, the first year the question was asked, 21.3 percent of high- school students said they spent three or more hours a day (outside school work) on social media, playing video games or using a computer. Since then, social media have exploded and average screen time has steadily increased,  to 41.2 percent in 2017. The national average in 2015 was 41.7 percent.

"By far the largest change in teens' lives between 2012 and 2016 was the increase in the amount of time they spent on digital media, and the subsequent decline in in-person social activities and sleep," lead author Jean M. Twenge told Agence France-Presse. "The advent of the smartphone is the most plausible explanation for the sudden decrease in teens' psychological well-being."

The AFP article adds that researchers didn't find that quitting digital media altogether was the answer, because they found that teens who spent a little less than an hour a day in front of the screen were the happiest. "It was after this daily hour of screen time that unhappiness levels steadily rose as screen time also rose," they report.

Healy adds that the analysis also found that teen "satisfaction did not consistently rise or fall in response to changes in median household income, the stock market's Dow Jones industrial average, the unemployment rate or college enrollment (which is also an economic bellwether)."

Doctors wary of using social media for patient communication

Doctors are reluctant to communicate with patients via social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, according to a story in The Cincinnati Enquirer. "You have to be very cautious, because once something's out there in the ether, it could go all sorts of places," Dr. Margaret LeMasters told the newspaper's Cliff Peale. "There's probably a way to do it, but you just have to be careful."

The health-care industry in general has been wary of using electronic communication between companies and consumers, Peale reports. Doctors, especially, prefer communication with patients either by phone call or face to face. The American Medical Association has released a new set of guidelines on use of social networks, most of which encourage caution. (Read more)