Extending Affordable, Accessible, Community-Delivered Hearing Care to Home Care

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Project Summary This proposal requests funding for Corinne Pittman, a third-year medical student from Howard University College of Medicine, to support advanced research training in community-delivered hearing care as a graduate research assistant in the Baltimore HEARS study. With the support of this diversity supplement, Ms. Pittman will join the HEARS research team for a 10-month intensive research training experience between her third and fourth years of medical school, prior to applying to residency in otolaryngology-head and neck surgery. Ms. Pittman will leverage her prior translational research experience at the NIH, along with her medical education, clinical skills, and community-based volunteer work toward addressing hearing healthcare disparities by extending the delivery of hearing care to other vulnerable populations through novel community-based approaches. Under the close mentorship of the HEARS research team, she will lead two projects that will explore the integration of the HEARS intervention into the innovative NIA-funded CAPABLE home care program. Specifically, Ms. Pittman will: 1) complete secondary data analysis of nationally representative data on the prevalence of hearing loss and hearing aid use among older adults receiving home care and 2) assess the specific needs of older home care recipients with hearing loss and potential barriers of integrating HEARS into a home care program by conducting a series of semi-structured interviews with CAPABLE participants and key stakeholders. Through this structured research experience, Ms. Pittman will advance her quantitative and qualitative research skills and further her career development as an aspiring surgeon-scientist dedicated to addressing health disparities.