H:EAR (Hearing: Education, Application, Research)

H:EAR [Hearing, Education, Application, Research] commenced in January 2017, to address major global challenges in the field of hearing health through a public health lens. The Centre’s vision is to be “a world-leading research centre in hearing health, using a multidisciplinary and community-engaged approach to solving major hearing health problems that translate into measurable and impactful change”. To maximize its social and economic impact, H:EAR focuses its research efforts on two populations in which hearing loss remains a major unaddressed public health problem (i.e. adults and indigenous peoples). It achieves its vision through; (i) targeted collaborative research and translation partnerships with leading universities and global and national hearing health organisations; (ii) developing the evidence-base to demonstrate the social and economic costs of unaddressed hearing loss, (iii) co-designing effective and implementable solutions to prevent and treat hearing loss through multidisciplinary research and consumer and community engagement, and (iv) raising political and societal awareness in Australia and globally, so that hearing loss is recognized and addressed as a major public health problem. It has a strong focus on capacity-building for early career researchers, and will design a pipeline to specifically target research capacity-building in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Reconceptualising hearing loss from a clinical problem to a major public health issue positions Macquarie as a leader within the broader field of hearing and health – integrating two university-wide initiatives (Macquarie University Hearing Strategy 2030 and MQ Health). H:EAR aligns with global and national initiatives (which the Centre Director has been actively involved with), including: World Health Organisation (WHO) initiatives, Federal Government’s Roadmap in Hearing Health, Macquarie University’s Hearing Strategy 2030, and Macquarie University Future-shaping research priorities. H:EAR will become one of only a few centres within the Macquarie University Hearing Strategy 2030, focusing on public health, research translation and impact. Combined with its major partners in the AHH, the Centre will apply for an NHMRC Synergy Grant in Year 3 (2022). As a WHO Collaborating Centre for the Prevention of Deafness and Hearing Loss (currently an informal centre), H:EAR is uniquely positioned to address this problem using a multi-disciplinary, consumer and community engaged, translational approach. The Centre includes world-renowned CIs in key areas of research excellence across the AHH (McMahon, McAlpine, Sharma, Buchholz and Dawes), Australian Institution of Health Innovation (AIHI; Coiera, Braithwaite, Rapport), Macquarie University Centre for Health Economy (MUCHE; Cutler), MQ Health (Dean & Amin), and Social Sciences (Matthews). Through its AHH partners, particularly Hearing Australia and the Sydney Cochlear Implant Centre (SCIC), H:EAR is well placed to ensure wide dispersion of knowledge, deliver models of best practice, and influence healthcare policy. Consolidating H:EAR’s evidence-based research-translation pathway: (i) enhances H:EAR’s capacity to develop new collaborations and exploit current relationships to apply for NHMRC Synergy and Partnership Grants; and (ii) directly address the Federal Government’s National Innovation and Science Agenda, where the national impact and engagement assessment will value and reward research