Hearing Matters Podcast

Advocacy in Hearing Healthcare: Beyond Politics to Patient Outcomes feat. Dr. Megan Adams

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What stands between hearing care professionals and effective advocacy? Dr. Megan Adams shatters common misconceptions with her doctoral research spanning 400 participants across the United States. The surprising truth? It's not time constraints holding us back...it's knowledge.

Dr. Adams reveals that 95% of hearing healthcare professionals consider legislative issues crucial, and nearly 90% want greater involvement in advocacy efforts. They simply need the roadmap. This groundbreaking finding shifts our entire approach from convincing professionals to make time for advocacy to providing them with practical tools and education.

Throughout our conversation, Dr. Adams dismantles the intimidation factor surrounding advocacy. Contrary to popular belief, most interactions with legislators don't involve debating policy but simply explaining what audiologists do and why quality hearing care matters. Small actions create tremendous impact—inviting officials to tour your clinic, hosting community events that include policymakers, or designating a team member to monitor relevant legislation during staff meetings.

The power of state-level organization emerges as another critical theme. Dr. Adams highlights Indiana's new audiology coalition, which has already hosted a successful conference and is working toward hiring a lobbyist in its first year. These state organizations provide the collective voice needed to address potentially harmful legislation before it passes.

Remember this fundamental truth: decisions affecting hearing healthcare will be made whether you participate or not. By educating policymakers and building community awareness, you ensure those decisions are informed by expertise rather than misconceptions. As Dr. Adams powerfully states, "I'm tired of playing defense. I want to play offense." Are you ready to join the movement transforming hearing healthcare advocacy from reactive to proactive?

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Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

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Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

Welcome back to another episode of the Hearing Matters Podcast. I'm founder and host, blaise Delfino, and, as a friendly reminder, this podcast is separate from my work at Starkey. You're tuned in to the Hearing Matters Podcast, the show that discusses hearing technology, best practices and a global epidemic hearing loss. I'm your host, blaise Delfino, and joining me today is my colleague, dr Megan Adams. She is an audiologist at Lafayette Hearing Center in Indiana. Dr Adams, welcome to the Hearing Matters podcast.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

Thank you so much for having me to the Hearing Matters podcast. Thank you so much for having me, megan, you and I have had countless conversations about advocacy hearing health care, really within the last 18 to 24 months, and before we dive into your thesis, which you wrote during your doctoral studies, I want you to share a little bit about yourself with our listeners. You've made quite the wave in the hearing health industry, personally and professionally. I really do admire your go-giver attitude, your passion for making change, not just talking about the change that we need to see, but making it happen. So tell us a little bit about you and really, what got you introduced to audiology, sure?

Dr. Megan Adams:

absolutely so. I started out, I was at Purdue and I picked the wrong major, like a lot of 18 year olds who think they know what they want to do for the rest of their lives. And I was wrong. But I started working for the practice I'm currently working at now as an assistant and I realized wrong. But I started working for the practice I'm currently working at now as an assistant and I realized very quickly that I just loved it. I loved working with these adults. I loved talking about hearing loss. I loved working with families and talking about communication. It just it. It hit home for me big time and at that point I just the rest was history. I just knew that's what I wanted to do.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

And it's almost like with hearing healthcare unless you have a personal tie to it or we've heard stories of audiologists and hearing healthcare professionals. I was diagnosed with hearing loss. My mother started wearing hearing aids. I was diagnosed with hearing loss. My mother started wearing hearing aids. So you were exposed to hearing health care in your early 20s, and look where you are now and what you've accomplished today and how many lives you've impacted. So, Megan, you are a Listen Carefully ambassador. Listen Carefully is a program focused on advocacy, education and news specific to hearing health care, and you wrote a thesis on advocacy. Bring us through this process. What led you to focus on your doctoral thesis on advocacy? Like, what did you learn? Right now, we sort of want to look under the hood of like, what did this research tell us? We want to know all about it. So tell us more did this research?

Dr. Megan Adams:

tell us? We want to know all about it, so tell us more. So I realized a continuing pattern when I was going through clinicals and had rotations, and it was that, even though every hearing care professional was different, they all seemed to complain that there were issues in our industry, that xyz was a problem, and then it would always follow with and that will never change and there's nothing we can do about this, or it will always be this way. And as a student especially, it created this sense of hopelessness. And, oh my goodness, am I really entering an industry that feels that way, that feels hopeless about the future, that feels like there's not anything we can do? And so, like many of my colleagues in the industry, I'm a little type A. I want to fix things, I like to find solutions.

Dr. Megan Adams:

And so I decided to collect data. I collected data from over 400 participants across the United States I did not isolate to just one state to find out what they considered the importance of legislative and congressional issues, how involved they were, if they weren't involved, what were the barriers to being involved, and then looking at the solutions to those barriers. So again, I didn't just want to look at are you involved or are you not? Do you want to be or do you not want to be? But how do I help you? How do I provide a solution for you to be able to do that more, if that's something that you want to do, that's important to you?

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

So you had a sample size of an N of 400. How did you go about recruiting 400? Like what was that process like? Because, especially as it relates to hearing healthcare, when you say hearing loss or hearing aids, most people are like, oh, I don't really know much about that. And then you sort of put on the advocacy and you know the advocacy efforts on top of that. So who was your N of 400?

Dr. Megan Adams:

It was audiologists, hearing instrument specialists, speech pathologists and audiology and speech pathology students. And I specifically included students in that pool because they are our future professionals and one of the major barriers that I found was that the universities are not all laying the foundation for the students, when they become professionals, to be informed and be ready to enter the industry to advocate effectively. And so it was a wide array of people across the United States. I wanted to include both audiology and speech pathology because in many states those licensure boards are connected. Much of the legislation is mutually effective with each other, so what affects one industry will often affect the other. So it's a pretty wide range. But again, I wanted to have a large sample size because I wanted to look. I didn't just want to look at the Midwest or just the East Coast, I wanted to include everyone.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

And thank you so much for doing that, because if you just kept it closed off to one part of the country, it's like, well, hearing loss and hearing healthcare, as we say in the beginning, is a global epidemic. But of course we just wanted to keep it national in terms of your research, because it makes sense from an advocacy standpoint of the policy specific to our country. Let's talk about barriers to our country. Let's talk about barriers. So we have this preconceived notion of there's so much.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

You know, the sky is falling in audiology, especially when OTC was initially announced, and I have to commend you, dr Adams, because you saw that there was a problem or a challenge and you said I'm going to dig deeper. So thank you for doing that for our industry, because that, like hopelessness of first of all, you were saying that you chose a major that you're like I don't know about, and then you go into audiology and then it's like, oh my gosh, I feel hopeless. But you said, nope, I am going to keep pushing forward, I'm going to find out the why behind this, and you absolutely did that in terms of the barriers that were revealed in your research. So tell us more about the barriers to advocacy in our field.

Dr. Megan Adams:

Going into the study, I fully theorized that time was going to be the main issue or lack of people may not care. So I thought that I kind of underestimated our industry, honestly, and so I thought, oh, people will say I don't have time for that, I can't take a day away from my clinic, or, you know, fill in the blank. And I was wrong. I was very, very wrong about that. 95% of participants said that they thought these issues were incredibly important, and almost 90% of them said that they would like to be involved or more involved than they are right now, and so that initial hypothesis was wrong.

Dr. Megan Adams:

And my second hypothesis that was completely wrong was that time was not the barrier, it was knowledge, and that was huge to me because it told me that people are willing to make the time. They're willing to make it happen because these issues are important to them and to their industry. They just don't know how, and I thought I can't make more time, but I can certainly inform, and so what's really neat about solutions like this is that there's not just one single solution, there are lots of solutions, and I love that because it means that the solutions are versatile and audiologists and hearing care professionals are versatile, and being able to meet you where you are in your industry, so that you can be involved and have better outcomes on the other side, is really what it's all about.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

So, megan, with this research, we know time is throw that out the window because hearing care professionals and even students, they want to be more involved, they want to see a change, and I think it's important. There's a difference between politics and policy. We're talking about policy right here. Hearing health care is bipartisan. We know the research that's been connected to untreated hearing loss and lost US earnings. And communication, again, is the exchange of ideas, language, a code in which ideas are shared, and then speech is that neuromuscular process. That's why hearing healthcare professionals, slps, we all work together to help our patients hear life's stories is really what we say Now, megan, one of the reasons why advocacy is so important to me personally, if I can just share a brief story, I'm a former private practice owner, genetically predisposed to hearing health care.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

It was during COVID when I and our team really started to become more involved with educating elected officials in our community. Because in Pennsylvania, where we were closed down for almost three and a half four months and set aside the business aspect of that, my patients really didn't have access to me. So of course we were leveraging and leaning into telehealth and things of that nature. I was literally driving to patients' homes and doing cleaning checks on their front porch. We did what we had to do and then I had a call with Michael Scholl. He is the EVP of customer relations at Starkey and he was like Blaise, start to educate your policymakers in Pennsylvania. And I said, done. That turned into us inviting Senator Scavello into our office. Megan, we gave him a tour, we did video otoscopy, we educated him and we started with him because he was at one of our ribbon cutting events. So we're like, okay, let's what's like some low hanging fruit of individuals that we know. That was so important. Because what that turned into Megan was. Then he invited my father and I onto his legislative report, which for months patients were like we saw you on TV. I didn't care that. Patients saw us on TV, I saw that number one we're making an impact, we're raising awareness of hearing healthcare.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

Senator Scavello knows about hearing healthcare, the impact of untreated hearing loss, and then it just kind of really started to gain more traction. So I wanted to share that personal story. I know you're going to share some stories as well with integrating your elected officials, but I will tell you the time aspect. We threw that out the window too. We threw that out the window too, because it's so important to us but most important for our patients.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

So you talk about building a culture of advocacy and there's so many of our colleagues we see in the hearing healthcare Facebook groups that are going to the hill and they're making change and they're being loud. It's the only time which is important to be loud. Turn down that volume so you don't get hearing loss. That's a dad joke right there. But building a culture of advocacy when you talk about the importance of starting advocacy education in the AUD and SLP programs, you know professors only have in. You know, for SLP it's two years, for your master's and then AD it's four years. Time is of the essence. How can we do this? Why is it so important to start at the collegiate level?

Dr. Megan Adams:

So informed students are going to create informed professionals. And starting at the level where you're taking in most of your knowledge, when you're entering the industry as a professional, is the best place to add this. And truly I would urge universities if this is not in your curriculum at all, it should be, and it doesn't mean it has to be an entire course. It doesn't mean it has to be an entire section of your course. You could spend just a couple of classes talking about this, discussing this, the what behind it, what is advocacy, what is lobbying? What are the big ways to do it? What are the smaller, easier ways to do it? What can it look like? And then the how do I do this? How do I make this happen? How do you speak to a policy maker? How do you do these things? And then they will know, entering whatever field of audiology they decide to go into, how to do that more effectively students become informed professionals, and those informed professionals can help their patients make educated hearing health care decisions.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

See, we have the connection here, megan. So we have hearing care professionals tune into our show weekly and many of them are private practice owners. How can private practice owners and clinicians, you know, see themselves as part of the advocacy solution, even if they don't? Now, here's the thing even if they don't see themselves as persuasive or political you and I were kind of talking about this a couple weeks ago, because that's often like we talk about. Sometimes the mountain is us Great book, by the way. We see ourselves as not being like persuasive or political. It's not me. Well, how can we get over that barrier, that that self talk of like, oh, I can't make a difference?

Dr. Megan Adams:

Like you said earlier, it's a from the political aspect, it's a nonpartisan issue and so, respectfully, we don't care who you voted for in the last election, but we do care if the audiology legislation in your state affects your business and affects the care that your patients deserve, and I think we can all agree on that. So that's really where we're all on the same team here. You do not have to have a persuasive personality. Most of the time when I've been involved directly with a legislator, I spend very little time actually talking about policy. It's typically talking about audiology. What do you do in a day? What is an audiologist? What does good hearing care look like? Why is it important that they know what good hearing care looks like? It's oftentimes you don't have to try and persuade on a decision for a bill. In fact, I would probably say the majority of the time you don't have to do that.

Dr. Megan Adams:

But it comes down to the misconceptions that people have about advocacy and lobbying, and one of my favorite things I did on this data was I had an open-ended portion where people could put comments in and, as I'm sure you can imagine, they were all over the place and some of the comments were you know well, I'm retiring, so why should I get involved? And others were. Well, when there's large organizations like X national audiology organization, then you know we're hopeless. I mean these are real things that people were saying and I realized, oh my goodness, people are just misinformed. And it's the same misinformation that we get frustrated about as professionals, that we see on Facebook and in the media, that we think, oh my goodness, I hate that patients are seeing. That it's the same. I feel the same way about the information that hearing care professionals are getting and believing and informing opinions on.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

Well, especially the up andand-coming hearing care professionals. When we talk about legacy and your advocacy efforts, advocacy isn't okay. I'm going to take three days and I'm going to go to Washington DC. That's not only what advocacy is. Advocacy can also be I'm going to make a 30 second selfie video and I'm going to talk to my patients about the importance of hearing healthcare and then maybe you tag one of your elected officials.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

But I will say that the importance of advocacy, education and news as it relates to even Hearing Matters podcast one of the reasons, personally, I'm so excited for the podcast. We've been doing this for six years now. We want to educate hearing care professionals and consumers and there's been some states there was no malicious intent to do this, but it's just policymakers weren't educated on hearing health care. This is where I'm getting at replacing a licensure with registration. There's been a couple states where that's been in the bill replacing hearing aid licensure with registration. Can you, for our listeners and consumers, tuned in, can you share with us why that is important to find in a bill and actually have reversed so it doesn't even ever get passed, why licensure is so important?

Dr. Megan Adams:

accountability. And unfortunately, I know we've all heard those horror stories of the practice in our state hopefully not in all of our communities that has done XYZ or you know, is doing things fraudulently or performing services that they are not licensed to perform or you know, fill in the blank, but unfortunately it's those kind of bad apples, as we've talked about, that kind of sour it for everyone else. And so this accountability at the state level is incredibly important. I would urge every professional if you've never looked at your scope of practice for your state, go look at it. See if it's vague, See if it's detailed, see if it is accurate and if it's not, try to have that conversation if you're comfortable. And one of the issues that came up a few years ago in Indiana was to deregulate the sale of hearing aids and that would have significantly impacted everyone's practice, our credibility as professionals, but then, most importantly, our patients' care. We know because of best practice guidelines and data and research that supports evidence-based practice, that would be far from what's best for our patients.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

Well, and the challenge there again, the deregulation can often come at a cost, especially as it relates to health care. And again, oftentimes, the authors of the bill. There's no malicious intent. Oftentimes it will be this umbrella of okay, let's replace licensure with registration for barbers, and let's also include hearing aid dispensers in there too, which is like that's totally different scope. This is the importance of lobbying, of reading those bills, of contacting the authors of those bills. But, megan, about 18 to 24 months ago and this, I still say this to this day and I always quote you you had said Blaise, I'm tired of playing defense, I want to play offense. Tell me more about what you mean there and why that's so important today in hearing healthcare.

Dr. Megan Adams:

Historically, we have always waited for an issue to come up and then we try and attack the issue, and that's exactly what happened with this deregulation of hearing aid sales in Indiana House bill is it slipped under the radar time and time again and we got to the very end and everyone went, oh shoot, we need to address this.

Dr. Megan Adams:

And so everyone rushed down to the state house and explained why this really wasn't in patient's best interest, and then it was unanimous at that point, and I'm grateful for the professionals that went down and did that. But is there a way to prevent it from even getting to that point? And what it comes down to is using your hearing aids versus barber, example. If our policymakers knew what hearing care is, what an audiologist or hearing care professional does, then that entire situation probably could have been avoided, because many of them would have said my XYZ wears hearing aids and their audiologist is fantastic. And I know they're not the same thing as a barber. Nothing against barbers, we just do different things, and simply being informed on that could have completely changed the game.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

And we have hearing healthcare professionals tuned in right now who might be asking well, how the heck do I raise awareness, even in my own community? Because hearing health care is absolutely 120% not 100% 120% community-based. So, megan, when I was in practice, we would have podcast days specific for our patients, which was great, and we closed down the office for a day. It was a great team-building exercise as well and I would interview key opinion leaders in the industry, but mostly patients who wore hearing technology, and that's a way that we could advocate and raise awareness of hearing healthcare in our community. But we would also invite elected officials so we would block off like an hour. We would bring them in otoscopy, show them the equipment I would encourage conducting a full audiological evaluation if time allows and then, of course, share the technology with them.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

It's an educational opportunity have coffee and light refreshments, things of that nature. So that's what our family practice did and continues to do today in terms of educating the community. But, megan, tell us what Lafayette Hearing Center is doing today to educate your patients, educate your community, and how are you, as a Listen Carefully ambassador, bringing the most current legislation to your clinic and educating? So three barrel question.

Dr. Megan Adams:

So I'll start by saying that, again, this is versatile, advocacy can be versatile, and so for some there might be a solution that works really, really well, and for some that solution may not work well for them at all. And part of what I'm working on and Listen Carefully is working on is what's the roadmap for people to use. How do we provide resources and make it easier for people to fit this into their day-to-day practice in a way that meets them where they are and is easy for them to implement? For some people, like you said, invite your elected officials in your state and offer to test their hearing, offer to show them around the clinic. It can be that simple.

Dr. Megan Adams:

What we have recently done at Lafayette Hearing Center is we had an appreciation event for our patients, and so they were the focus, of course, but we use that as an opportunity to invite the mayor and invite state representatives and anyone that was able to make it, because it was a good opportunity for them, because they get to be around their constituents and the people that they're representing day in and day out, and the patients got to see those officials and interact with them, and we were able to bring community awareness awareness at the state level. It was really, really fantastic and it's an easy way to get some eyes on hearing care and, more importantly, get some eyes on good quality hearing care that's evidence-based, where your patients are getting the best care possible.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

Absolutely. And so much to unpack there, dr Adams, because you had a theme. It was a luau theme, I believe correct, yes, and Dr Juliet St Sterkens she presented. I love this setup of what you did because this is absolutely advocacy. You're incorporating your patients, you're incorporating your community. Your elected officials, their constituents, are there and I'm sure it was such a breath of fresh air of wow. We're giving back to our community. Our patients are here, you're educating them on the updated, most recent technology and you've created a hearing home for your patients.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

We believe hearing health care in the hands of the hearing care professional has the best outcomes. Sure, the debate of access and affordability we've been having for many years now. It is my professional belief that the A4 mentioned is true and there's, of course, data to back that up. But when you went about inviting elected officials to this event, again, we say hearing healthcare is bipartisan. It Doesn't matter whether you're a Republican or Democrat. We all need to work together to address this challenge. How did you go about inviting these elected officials? Was it a heavy lift? What did that look like? Kind of, bring us through that process, absolutely.

Dr. Megan Adams:

That is still a work in progress. The first thing that you need to do is look at the session schedule for your state, and that varies a little bit from state to state, but there are resources online to help you find out what that schedule looks like. And then it's as simple as sending an email, making a phone call and I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to get ahold of our senators and it some of them. They would respond and say you know, I have a commitment in this county that day, so I really I can't make it, but I'd love to, and some are able to come. But what I'm, what we're trying to do right now, is to again create a roadmap and a framework to help professionals know what's the timeline look like, what do I need to do two months in advance or six months in advance, and an email template that I can send, and what kinds of information are going to be important to include in this invitation so that they're more likely to come.

Dr. Megan Adams:

What's going to be impactful in this invitation so that they're more likely to come. What's going to be impactful? And I also think it's worth mentioning that I didn't talk about a single policy or bill or anything during that visit. We just talked about audiology and hearing care and the telecoil loops and or a cast in our community. It was just all about audiology nerd stuff, so it was not even about policy. So it's not complicated.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

Well, and I'm sure that the elected official appreciated that as well, because, at the end of the day, we're all human, like because they're in office, it doesn't mean that they have this like supernatural human power. No, we are both humans. We have two eyes, two ears and a mouth. We're on that same plane and I am absolutely sure that your passion for hearing healthcare, for helping your patients, bled through these conversations, dr Adams, because, again, your advocacy efforts. Thank you so much for what you're doing for the industry and there's so many others in our industry. But we are the most socially connected demographic to ever exist, and I've been saying this a lot lately, and the reason I keep saying it is we are the most socially connected demographic to ever exist. That means that we transfer information so fast. That means that we transfer information so fast.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

Let's leverage the media today to educate on the importance of hearing healthcare. You know it doesn't matter. I understand there are some organizations that have these big budgets and what have you? You're able to connect to billions of people through your phone, through your social media channels. Now, granted, it's challenging to do, sometimes with the algorithms, but one way you could do this, and one way I did this is to get the attention of an elected official. Start tagging them in your social media copy, say, hey, you know, even make a video. I would say, let's say you were Senator Megan Adams. Senator Megan Adams, blaise Delfino, here with Audiology Services, I would love to invite you to my office to learn more about hearing healthcare and why it's important to preserve your hearing things of that nature. So I welcome your thoughts there with that approach, megan.

Dr. Megan Adams:

Absolutely. I mean I think that's right. There is what I love about advocacy because I think historically the reason people have struggled so much with the how is that there isn't a single how. There's lots. And the more we think outside the box, the more versatile it gets, the more ways there are to advocate.

Dr. Megan Adams:

I mean it could be as simple as you have one person on your team in your practice that monthly looks at the current audiology legislation in your state and when you have your monthly meeting as a team in your practice, that monthly looks at the current audiology legislation in your state and when you have your monthly meeting as a team, they take two minutes to update your team. Nope, there's nothing going on this month. Or we have house bill X and it's looking at scope of practice. It could be that simple to keep your team informed. I would encourage you if you are in a state and you don't know if there's active legislation about scope of practice right now, go take a look because there are almost 130 active pieces of legislation in the United States right now that could affect audiology. So it's a big deal and it's widespread and the again the advocacy can be very small. You can go to DC and I'd encourage you to do that. If that's something that you want to do, that's important to you.

Dr. Megan Adams:

But it can be as simple as in your office a two minute piece of your team meeting or inviting the mayor to your office for a cup of coffee. Like you said, it can be very, very simple. Community outreach events whatever is going to tell your community. Engage your community and your local officials, your elected officials, to be involved and don't always treat them like elected officials. Like you said, they're humans too. They are also your patients and the family members of your patients, and they are also often in the demographic that has hearing loss. So invite them to any patient events, have a cup of coffee with them, make it fun and don't talk about policy necessarily.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

Yeah, it doesn't have to be dry.

Dr. Megan Adams:

It doesn't have to be boring.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

And Megan, what I love is you're talking about. So let me ask you let me just slow the roll here Are you that team member at Lafayette Hearing Center who raises awareness and lets the team know what legislation is impacting your state? Yes, or your scope, I would say I am.

Dr. Megan Adams:

But I also thought about it from another perspective and thought if I wasn't that person, what would? What would the solution be? And I thought that is a really simple monthly job to give to one person in your office. It could be another audiologist, it could be an assistant, it could be a back office worker, it could be anyone that is able to just look at current events.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

I love that idea. I mean, first and foremost, I think every clinic should have a morning huddle, just so you know what the heck is going on for the day, because I remember when I was practicing, the mornings we didn't have a huddle. It was like holy smokes what's going on here today. But another idea for our hearing care professionals tuned in is when you do have these morning huddles that do include, you know, a two to three minute update, legislative update. Snap a photo of your team meeting and that's a social media post that you can put on your clinic Facebook, your clinic Instagram media posts that you can put on your clinic Facebook, your clinic Instagram tag.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

Some of your elected officials leverage the media that you have at your fingertips. It's real simple to just take a couple seconds and snap a photo. Dr Adams, earlier you had mentioned the importance of state organization and prior to hitting record today, I said I didn't even realize that you and I are recording, and then, right after, we have Dr Lindsay Coble who's coming on the show, and both of you are in Indiana. So there's some new developments going on in Indiana as it relates to this new coalition. Tell me more about this. Why is it such a big step, and how do you see yourself being involved?

Dr. Megan Adams:

So Indiana did not have a state audiology organization and Dr Lindsay Coble and Dr Erica Person came together and said came together and said, let's start one. And I admire both of them immensely for doing that. And it has just taken off like wildfire Again, like the data supports. People care about these issues. They just need the how, they need the knowledge, and I respect both of them so much for creating an organization, this audiology coalition, where our professionals can come together and get that knowledge and network with each other and have mutual understanding of what do we want audiology care to look like in Indiana. And they've I mean, it's year, it's year one, and I just can't even believe what they've accomplished in that year. So in joining what?

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

are some of the big wins, like what have you all accomplished?

Dr. Megan Adams:

Cause I'm excited to know they had a fantastic first conference with good attendance and great speakers and great networking. And people have just raved and raved and raved about that, which I have heard nothing but really good things about what everyone thought of that first conference. And that's year one. I mean, what a huge win. They're working on hiring a lobbyist. As we all know, that's not something that happens overnight, but there's power in numbers, which goes back to why it's so incredibly important to join that state organization so that you can support your state at that level. And they're able to hire a lobbyist and they're able to address issues like when a house bill, like in Indiana, slides under the radar and comes in at the last minute.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

Many thanks to Dr Coble and Dr Person for kickstarting Indiana's new coalition. I feel like I have so many friends now in Indiana like Matt Hay, james Shrake with ReduxU. Our professional network is growing in Indiana for sure. That's exciting news about the lobbyist and so that's a state coalition. Indiana's never had this before. So I'm super excited to hear about the lobbyist and so that's a state coalition. Indiana's never had this before. So I'm super excited to hear about the developments. National resources like a listen carefully. You know why is it important for professionals to also become active members of these organizations, to really get involved with advocacy from their desk.

Dr. Megan Adams:

So there are resources from Listen Carefully, aaa, where you can actually sign up for alerts when there's major legislation occurring federally or in your state, and it can be as simple as the click of a button to send an email. And again there's power in numbers. We know it's going to be more effective if you can back it up with an anecdote, if you can say here's why this matters to me, here's the story that I have to support this XYZ. But even if you're not able to do that, even if the only thing you have time for that day is to hit send, then organizations have made it very, very easy to stay informed and to again not even leave your desk.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

Well, and what's nice too is the development. You go to listencarefullyorg, you go to take action and then you have that voter voice integration tool where it has updated legislation. But if you are a hearing care professional, again listencarefullyorg, go to the voter voice tool. You can contact your state elected officials. You can send them a message. All of their contact information is accurate. It is up to date. So that was a really cool development that Listen Carefully had introduced. Special thanks to Michael Scholl and Lou Kellyer, and we know that yourself and fellow Listen Carefully ambassadors have utilized that tool.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

Megan, I want to switch gears here a little bit and talk about community-based advocacy in your practice. So we talked about your local community event patient appreciation event, let's call it. Ironically, this morning I received a text message from a colleague who works at a fire department and I know that your organization is collaborating with your local fire department, so this is absolutely part of advocacy. There's been research done as it relates to firefighters and hearing loss. Bring us through this advocacy effort why it's important and what really kickstarted it.

Dr. Megan Adams:

So this is a really mutually beneficial way for practices to be involved in their community, build their business, provide good patient care. It just it kind of hits everything that you want, oftentimes locally at the state level, there's some kind of funding or grant for protection like this. We know how important it is, and I'm sure many of us have seen law enforcement officers, firefighters, emergency workers that have noise related hearing loss, and so it's a really easy way to to give back to your community, to support them, to also support your business and to make an impact. It's a again like there are ways to do this that benefit your business and give your patients the care that they deserve. It does not have to be that you give, give, give. It is mutually beneficial.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

And the importance of protecting your hearing. We talk about, okay, untruded hearing loss being linked to all of these different comorbidities, but let's also talk about protecting our hearing up front as it relates to our public health officials things of that nature, thank you, and Lafayette Hearing Center for doing that, because that's so important. I have family members who are firefighters as well, and it's like we have to protect those who protect us and serve our community.

Dr. Megan Adams:

The other thing, blaise, that I love about things like this is that when we're in small communities like Listen Carefully and even audiology as a whole is really a fairly small industry ideas like this take off, and so I know there are other practices that are implementing these same kinds of programs in their communities, and it's just it's really great to see that people are getting creative with this and trying different kinds of outreach, because it just all trickles down into your patient outcomes.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

Talking about patient outcomes, megan. How does educating your community affect patient outcomes and even your practice's growth?

Dr. Megan Adams:

So the decisions that are made that affect our industry are going to be made regardless of the knowledge that backs them up, and I think that is really really critical because the decisions made really really critical, because the decisions made whether you're involved in it or not, whether you have informed anyone or not, and so advocating in your community, locally, at a state level, however, you can snowballs, and so it gives better patient access. It allows your patients to be informed, which, again going back to the bad apples, they can tell the difference if they're informed and they can come to the practices that they know are going to take good care of them and follow evidence-based practices. It is better for workplace development. I mean it trickles down and all of these things, as we know from goodness, research and different books that come to mind. It all goes hand in hand. Taking care of your community, taking care of your industry, taking care of your business and your employees. Your patients are going to get better care and they're going to get better outcomes. And when patients come into your practice, they can tell when you genuinely care about what you do.

Dr. Megan Adams:

And I will sometimes even say if my patients talk about you know I'm frustrated about this and that and you know why do I have to get a referral for this or fill in the blank? It's really easy to say. You know I have worked really hard with a lot of other audiologists and hearing care professionals to try and address that. It just doesn't happen overnight. But I can assure you I am working hard, and so are a lot of other people, and that's all they can ask for.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

And I love how you and your team let your patients know we're working on this and that shows innovation is such an umbrella term, because it's not just technology innovation, it's advocacy innovation. Dr Megan Adams, I cannot thank you enough for your advocacy, for your passion, for your excitement. Advocacy for your passion, for your excitement. I hope to join one of Indiana's coalitions meetings one day and kind of see what the culture is like, because I feel like it's just, it's incredible. I get a feeling from hundreds of miles away that it's just such a great group. Megan, I really want to thank you for joining us today on the Hearing Matters podcast. This has been a conversation that we've been talking about for quite some time, but the time was absolutely now. Final takeaway if you could leave one message with our fellow hearing care professionals about advocacy, what would it be?

Dr. Megan Adams:

Advocacy in many different forms, whether it's big or small, is going to lead to better business practices and better patient outcomes.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

I love that, and better patient outcomes absolutely not only help the industry but, most importantly, help the patient. You're tuned in to the Hearing Matters podcast. I'm your host, blaise Delfino, and until next time, hear life's story.

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Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS

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