- Aim: To change established attitudes and behaviour in society towards hearing loss and the use of hearing aids.
- Impact: The advertising agency M&C Saatchi has been working
with us (on a pro bono basis) to produce a major attitude and awareness
campaign to be launched at the end of 2009.
We promoted our telephone hearing check at all the major political party conferences and at events run in partnership with local councils and private companies. Information about the check was also widely circulated to the general public and over 1,400 checks were carried out by trained staff and volunteers using handheld checkers at a range of events, from biomedical conferences to health exhibitions. We sent 500 hearing check packs (on request) to employers, and postcards and posters to 200 libraries. We promoted hearing health messages through the Royal British Legion, British Association of Shooting and Conservation, and Age Concern leading to greater levels of awareness amongst key audiences at risk of hearing loss.
- Aim: To make it easy for people to take early action on their hearing loss.
- Impact: By participating in the major European HearCom
research project, we were able to use our technical knowledge and understanding
of users' needs to develop a web-based
hearing check, which we launched in January 2009.
We redeveloped our telephone hearing check with new celebrity recordings by Barbara Windsor and Max Boyce, including a new Welsh language check. By March 2009, almost half a million people had taken action and checked their hearing. About one in five callers were recommended to make an appointment with their GP to start investigating a possible hearing loss and who otherwise have not been aware that there was a potential problem with their hearing.
- Aim: To make safer listening a widely understood public health issue.
- Impact: By speaking to festival-goers at six of the UK's
biggest music festivals, including Glastonbury and Reading, we encouraged
more than 1,000 people to pledge to look after their hearing and received
3,700 responses to a questionnaire that encouraged music-lovers to think
about their hearing. We recruited 14 celebrity supporters to promote our
messages to their fans through video interviews, the internet and other
media and distributed 500 posters promoting safe listening messages at
Luminar-owned nightclubs.
Our Don't Lose the Music campaign website, which helps make people aware of the dangers of excessive noise, received over 50,000 visitors, compared with a target of 80,000. However, we smashed our media target getting coverage. We had a large amount of national coverage in papers including the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail; we did dozens of radio interviews and appeared on The One Show and Embarrassing Teenage Bodies all of which ensured we raised awareness of the issue.
- Aim: To encourage people to take action to prevent damage to their hearing.
- Impact: We gave out more than 15,000 protective earplugs at festivals, club nights and health exhibitions to encourage music lovers to be aware of the dangers of loud noise and take action in future to prevent hearing damage.
- Aim: To make it easy for people to learn more about their hearing health.
- Impact: As part of the major European HearCom research
project, we led the introduction of a unique online guide called HearCompanion,
which provides information to patients at every step of their journey
allowing them to be better informed about their hearing and potential
hearing loss.
Our telephone, internet and handheld hearing checks now include improved options for callers to request more information about their level of hearing loss.
- Aim: To accelerate research into new treatments and medical devices to restore and protect hearing, and cure tinnitus.
- Impact: We funded world-class research and training in 33 hearing research groups. This research has led to several exciting breakthroughs in the past year. One RNID-funded team discovered that obesity and smoking increase the risk of developing hearing loss later in life. Another discovered that specific genes involved in regulating nerve cells have increased activity in the brain after hearing loss, which could be a possible cause of tinnitus. Other RNID-funded researchers discovered a promising drug that may be useful in treating noise-induced hearing loss. They are planning clinical trials to test this drug further.
- Aim: To promote the opportunities in hearing research for the purpose of increasing public and private investment in this field.
- Impact: We organised a successful conference in partnership with Fight for Sight to highlight the opportunities that exist in hearing and vision research, attracting 150 delegates from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. We also exhibited at two international trade conventions and increased the circulation of our industry-focused e-newsletter to more than 500 subscribers. We provided expert advice to 48 pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, helping them understand the markets for medical treatments to combat hearing loss and tinnitus, and how their technology could be applied.
- Aim: To continue to build relationships with corporate partners for fundraising purposes.
- Impact: In September 2008, RNID was chosen as The
Co-operative Charity of the year for 2009. The partnership was launched
nationally in January, with regional launches taking place across the
UK at over 160 Co-operative Food stores. Since then, employees from across
The Co-operative have been aiming to raise £2m for our Hear
to Help projects, which support and provide information to people
with hearing aids. Their fundraising will also help us to make improvements
to a number of our Care Services projects. Through the partnership we
have benefited from a cause-related marketing campaign with Procter &
Gamble and other suppliers have supported RNID at corporate balls and
golf days. The Co-operative has supported our Hearing Check campaign and
raised awareness about deafness and hearing loss to the public by promoting
the check in-store and to its 120,000 employees.
See our impact in Scotland.