Research project

Making research relevant. Can awareness of routes to better brain health be increased through dialogue with underserved communities?

Project overview

Unmanaged hearing loss results in disability in older age. Hearing aids and cochlear implants can restore hearing and may preserve brain health. We want to increase awareness of the links between brain health, dementia, and poor hearing to empower people to seek hearing-healthcare.

We want to make these messages relevant and liveable. People at greatest risk of dementia are in lower socioeconomic groups with the barriers of less agency and entitlement. This is compounded for people from minority ethnic groups.

We will extend our outreach on hearing loss in the community to include underserved communities in conversations about brain health and dementia.

We will evaluate the effectiveness of a period of working with communities in their gathering places to improve the engagement of a wider community in thinking about their own brain health, their willingness to get engaged in research and to encourage and enable positive behaviour change.

Funding: Public and Community Development Fund 2023 - 2024

Staff

Lead researchers

Dr Kate Hough

Research Fellow in Neuroimmunology
Research interests
  • Hearing loss
  • Cochlear implants
  • Macrophages
Connect with Kate

Other researchers

Professor Tracey Newman

Director of the Doctoral College
Research interests
  • The demographic of populations worldwide is changing. People are living longer but with more …
  • Hearing loss and dementia: I lead multidisciplinary research focussed on hearing loss, the us…
  • My focus is understanding cellular mechanisms in these conditions and also how the learning a…
Connect with Tracey

Dr Rosalind Willis BSc MSc PhD

Associate Professor
Research interests
  • Ethnicity
  • Ageing
  • Dementia
Connect with Rosalind

Research outputs