Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School to Open Hearing Center With $10 Million Gift

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has received a $10 million gift to open a research center to study the effects of hearing loss, particularly among seniors, reports the Baltimore Sun . School officials want the Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health to find ways to prevent dementia and other cognitive declines that sometimes accompany hearing loss. Heading the center will be Bloomberg School Professor Dr. Frank Lin. "We are just now beginning to understand the impact that hearing loss can have on the lives of older adults," Lin notes. "Amazingly, there is a dearth of public health research that examines this area and that is geared towards developing solutions and policies needed to mitigate these effects." The funding from Cochlear Ltd. will support infrastructure for the center, its faculty, and trainees. Research will be funded via grants such as those from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Scientists associated with the center had more than $20 million in NIH funding to study hearing loss. "We expect the collaboration behind this Center to generate insights into how to create scalable economic models for the delivery of hearing services to the millions of older adults in need," Lin says.