Community Education and Family Doctors

This program would enlist the support of health care providers with the broadest reach into the general population: the family doctor.

Working through medical societies and national and international health care organizations, family doctors will be encouraged to routinely suggest a baseline hearing test for anyone aged 55 years or older.

To motivate patients to follow through, family doctors would write "prescriptions for hearing health" - directing patients to make annual hearing checks as part of their health care routines.

With the endorsement of professional audiology associations and audiologists, the initiative would offer free-of-charge hearing checks to people over 55 years of age when presenting the family physicians' referral.

With the physician/audiologist foundation in place, a wide-range of ' first movers' such as healthcare and community groups would be mobilized to actively support the hearing check as part of routine health care initiatives.