By Joni Doherty, MD, PhD
The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) was established to improve the lives of those people with communication difficulties. NIDCD is one of the Institutes that comprise the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Established in 1988, NIDCD is mandated to conduct and support biomedical and behavioral research and research training in the normal and disordered processes of hearing, balance, smell, taste, voice, speech, and language. The Institute also conducts and supports research and research training related to disease prevention and health promotion; addresses special biomedical and behavioral problems associated with people who have communication impairments or disorders; and supports efforts to create devices which substitute for lost and impaired sensory and communication function. I was fortunate enough to receive funding from the NIDCD for research on vestibular schwannomas (a.k.a. acoustic neuromas) during my tenure at the University of California, San Diego.
If you or a loved one has suspected hearing loss, I encourage you to check out NIDCD’s website at http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/ One of the more useful tools you’ll find on the site is a quiz entitled Ten Ways To Recognize Hearing Loss which will help you determine if you need to have your hearing evaluated by a medical professional. To take the quiz, click here