- Aim: To enable people who are deaf or hard of hearing to make informed decisions about their lives.
- Impact: We continue to provide free, impartial information
on a range of subjects, including hearing aids, tinnitus, communication,
employment, equipment, legislation and benefits. This helps people to
find out more about their hearing loss or how to manage their tinnitus,
as well as the equipment and services that can support them and to which
they are entitled. In the past year, our
Information Line and Tinnitus Helpline responded to more than 31,000
requests for information. Across the UK our information teams provided
information directly to more than 35,000 people, by organising or attending
events. Our
website received more than 66,000 unique visitors per month.
See our impact in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
- 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 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 consult with people who have tinnitus to develop solutions to help relieve the symptoms of tinnitus.
- Impact: We released our range of Tune Out Tinnitus CDs – four CDs of differing relaxation sounds. As well as providing relief for people with tinnitus, they also complement the increased range of stand-alone tinnitus relaxers available from RNID Products ensuring that those with tinnitus have more choice in how to address the symptoms and improve wellbeing.