Ida Attended Joint Defense Veterans Audiology Conference

By Amanda Farah Cox

The Ida Institute recently attended the Joint Defense Veterans Audiology Conference in St. Louis, Missouri. The three day conference where Ida ran a booth was an opportunity to meet VA audiologists and introduce them to our tools, particularly our recently launched Telecare platform.

At the 2015 JDVAC, Ida tools were recommended for use in VA clinics. “Patient centered care empowers Veterans to define and achieve their own lifelong goals,” stated the official recommendation. “It considers their whole health – every aspect of life that affects their health and well-being.”

“We met some people who were definitely using the lines, and people who loved the box because they felt for young soldiers, especially, the cost of doing nothing needs to be discussed,” says Ida Associate Director Sharmi Albrechtsen. “Many of them don’t want to use hearing aids and are not motivated. So what can we do to motivate them?”

JDVAC was also an opportunity for us to learn valuable insight about the concerns of active duty audiologists. For many of them, their focus is first and foremost on preventing hearing loss in active duty soldiers through better hearing protection.

“Some of the learnings were really that we have to look at Ida tools and see how they fit into the different VA clinics,” says Sharmi, “because some of them are for these active duty soldiers and some of them are for veterans, and they have very, very different needs. And how do we tailor the tools so they fit? I think that’s what we particularly gained was talking to the different types of audiologists, who are working in different types of organizations within the Veterans Administration.”