New Ida Workshop Asks Partners in Hearing for Different Perspectives

By anmo@idainstitute.dk

The Ida Institute recently held a workshop, “Partners in Hearing: Learning Together,” in Skodsborg, Denmark. The workshop brought together people with hearing loss, hearing care professionals, and representatives of patient organizations to develop new ideas and conceptualize resources that can support people with hearing loss on their hearing journey.

The workshop was organized in collaboration with Action on Hearing Loss, the Hearing Loss Association of America, and the Ear Foundation. It followed from October’s “What Matters To You?” seminar, where we decided we wanted to further explore the creation of educational and general awareness materials for hearing loss.

This initiative was welcomed by the workshop participants who stressed the need for developing resources and tools to support people with hearing loss. One participant said she had spent “a lot of time educating family and friends.” Another described his rehabilitation efforts as being “by trial and error.” 

Over the course of two days, participants worked in groups to generate ideas for different tools that could support people with hearing loss in different aspects of their lives. Together, we explored different themes: 

Empowerment: In this theme, we looked how to provide people with hearing loss with the support they need to advocate for themselves.

Peer-to-peer support: This theme looked at a way for people with hearing loss to connect and share experiences.

Family and Friends: In this theme we explored how people with hearing loss and their close relatives can work together to address the hearing loss as a family.

Journey planning: This theme looked at how relevant information on hearing loss can be organized for the people who need it at various stages on their hearing journey.

Workplace: This theme explored how to make the workplace more accommodating and empower people with hearing loss at work. 

The ideas developed at the workshop will be further refined in the coming months. We look forward to sharing the progress with the Ida Community as the projects begin to take shape.