HESP Work in Progress: Katie Palandrani (HESP)

This talk is open to all students and postdocs. No faculty, please!

Values in Hearing Healthcare Service Delivery

(Practice talk for American Auditory Society)

Abstract: Untreated hearing loss is a significant public health issue which negatively affects cognition, independence, social/emotional health, and overall quality of life for millions of Americans. Barriers to treatment invite novel and innovative solutions. Values-sensitive design is an approach that can be used to develop solutions that preserve the values important to the stakeholders involved. The goal of the current study was to characterize the intended and enacted values in hearing healthcare service delivery. A three-step qualitative content analysis approach was used to create a comprehensive list of values in hearing healthcare. In step 1, team members identified textual documents that represent the intended and enacted values in hearing healthcare. In step 2, a preliminary codebook was created through a top-down approach in which team members with expertise in values research and audiology created a list of potential values in hearing healthcare. In step 3, an iterative, bottom-up approach was used to refine the preliminary codebook as it was applied to relevant documents. The result of this study is a comprehensive list of values in hearing healthcare service delivery. Values were organized into three main categories: instrumental, patient use, and moral. We applied a theoretical framework from values research to systematically assess hearing healthcare service delivery. Future applications of this list could include comparisons of the values of different stakeholders including but not limited to individuals with hearing loss, health care providers, hearing aid manufacturers, and legislative bodies that regulate the marketing and sale of hearing aids.