Tuesday, 16 April 2024

Kate started the meeting by welcoming everyone to the meeting including the regular members and those who were attending for the first time. The new members Martin, Susie and Ali briefly introduced themselves. Kate then gave some updates of things that had happened since the last meeting.

We had a busy March with two public engagement events: Science and Engineering Day and Biological Sciences Outreach Festival. Thank you to those who volunteered their time for these events. We raised awareness of hearing loss and cochlear implants to members of the public of all ages. We also co-organised a Hearing loss and Diabetes event. Kate also shared that our publication about the development and evaluation of ALL_EARS@UoS has been published.

Kate shared some sad news with the group that Ian Hobday, an original member of the group and author on our new paper, sadly passed away recently. Our thoughts are with Ian’s family.

The first activity of the meeting was to discuss; how do people see their deafness or their lived experience of deafness/hearing loss? Group members were asked to complete a short, anonymous survey. The second activity was to discuss some current research about cochlear implant referrals in the UK, including a recently published study and work from Alisha Giby in our group. We discussed the need for raising awareness in different communities, empowering people with knowledge to ask questions about implants and encouraging support so people feel less fearful of cochlear implants. A question was posed to the group to think about going forwards: What needs to be done a local and national level to reduce these disparities and increase referral rates?

To end, Kate and Tracey wrapped up the meeting and thanked everyone for coming and contributing.