- Aim: Increase public awareness of tinnitus and of the support available to manage the condition. Secure 100 million opportunities to see information and reach 130,000 people through a top-quality information service.
- Impact: We achieved more than 300 million media opportunities to see information about our tinnitus work.
Our website www.tuneouttinnitus.org.uk, launched in July 2007, has so far been visited by around 47,000 visitors. We also answered 3,497 Tinnitus Helpline enquiries and distributed 4,000 copies of our magazine Tinnitus Focus to audiologists and other professionals who support people with tinnitus.
We distributed more than 136,000 leaflets about tinnitus through various channels throughout the UK, including GP surgeries and audiology clinics. We held two successful study days for audiologists and hearing therapists to share research methods and results.
- Aim: Increase regional coverage of outreach information services by 20% including through development of a new tinnitus outreach service. Continue to develop RNID’s website as the destination of choice for information on deafness and hearing loss to reach 120,000 visitors a month.
- Impact: Our outreach information team of staff and volunteers increased the number of face-to-face contacts by 17% across the UK to 37,846.
We also made 3,289 face-to-face contacts with people with tinnitus though our outreach information work, a 50% increase on last year. Our website was visited by an average of 116,389 visitors a month.
- Aim: Actively promote safer listening messages by ensuring that 250,000 people take action to protect their hearing. Promote safer listening messages to nightclub customers by building strategic partnerships with 25 nightclubs in the UK.
- Impact: We reached more than 250,000 people by distributing more than 95,000 pairs of earplugs at festivals, club nights and other events, achieving more than 26,000 page views per month to our website www.dontlosethemusic.com. We send out 1,700 eNewsletters per month, promoting safer listening messages.
We have worked directly with a wide variety of nightclubs - including London clubs Ministry of Sound and Heaven - and DJ Magazine to raise awareness of earplugs and tinnitus among clubbers.
- Aim: Invest £800,000 in world-class research to position hearing science as attractive and beneficial to scientists, business and the general public to ensure further investment.
- Impact: More than £800,000 was awarded to our research programme which attracted more than 30 quality research proposals. An independent advisory panel of leading UK research scientists rated many of these as "world class" and four major new research projects have begun.
14 companies worked closely with us to better understand the opportunities of hearing research, with new drugs for tinnitus and protection from loud noise entering the early stages of clinical trials.
In an exciting breakthrough, our grant programme led to the discovery of specific changes in people's genes that make them more likely to lose their hearing as a result of smoking or obesity.
Our ‘Hearing the Future’ conference for 170 members was oversubscribed.
- Aim: Conduct and disseminate a major annual survey into the needs of people who are deaf or hard of hearing, covering all aspects of their lives. Conduct and publish significant new research into the medical and social experiences of people with tinnitus.
- Impact: The annual survey continues to be highly successful, with a response rate of more than one in four. We will use the results to inform our ongoing work to improve access to public transport and employment prospects for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
The new research on tinnitus has been completed and publication is imminent.
Florence's story
Florence, 79, has had hearing loss and tinnitus for 40 years. Her tinnitus means she often feels like she is sitting in the cockpit of an aircraft.
“My biggest problem with tinnitus is that …when I am alone I don't know if the noise is in my ear or if there is a fire in the house.” Florence
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Did you know...
136,000
information leaflets about tinnitus were distributed.