Hearing Health Delivery: An Interview with Larry Humes, PhD

By Sumit Dhar and Larry Humes

This article is a part of the July/August 2017, Volume 29, Number 4, Audiology Today issue.

DR. SUMIT DHAR: Hello Dr. Humes, thank you for agreeing to answer a few questions about your recent publication related to different modes of hearing aid delivery (Humes, 2017). I have many questions that probably are on the minds of readers as well.

It is not a surprise to me that the study is meticulously designed to isolate one variable of interest. You could not have timed this publication better, with all of the current interest on this topic. I am very familiar with your prolific publication history on a variety of topics from basic psychophysics, to speech perception, to amplification, to multisensory perception in aging. This, however, is your first foray into hearing health-care delivery. So, how did this work and the resultant publication come about?

DR. LARRY HUMES: Yes, although I have been involved in clinical research, including hearing aid outcomes, for many years, this was my first foray into clinical trials research involving hearing health-care delivery. The impetus for my involvement in this area, which led to the recently completed clinical trial, was my participation as a member of a working group put together by Amy Donahue at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), addressing the accessibility and affordability of hearing health care. 

It was clear from the discussion that many working group members and presenters were deeply concerned about the decades-long impasse in getting hearing help to millions of adults with mild to moderate hearing loss. The presentations and subsequent discussion led to the identification of a wide range of areas that, with additional research, might one day lead to improved hearing health care for these millions of Americans.

Great, sounds like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) workshop in 2009 was instrumental in starting a movement toward many fundamental changes in hearing health care. The resultant editorial by Donahue, Dubno, and Beck (2010) lists multiple research needs for the field. What attracted you to this particular question?

We actually came away from this working group meeting with a number of possible research problems that could be addressed by our group at Indiana University (IU). After doing some more research, we decided to focus on two topics: (1) pros and cons of service-delivery models for the provision of hearing aids and (2) improved auditory training for those who purchase hearing aids. Each was designed to be addressed through a randomized clinical trial and both trials have now completed data collection. Thus far, only the clinical trial on service-delivery models has been published, with the analyses and publication of the other trial still in progress.