Thanks for participating in our 4th Annual Conference of the Coalition for Global Hearing Health!

Our inaugural conference, held in June of 2010 at the headquarters of the American Academy of Otolaryngology in Alexandria Virginia was a great success. Representatives from 14 countries including professionals from all aspects of hearing healthcare, deaf educators and patient advocates met and discussed common interests. During our second conference at the House Ear Institute in Los Angeles we engaged in extended discussions about the highest priority concerns in hearing healthcare around the world and especially in low-resource settings. In Los Angeles, we identified areas of need where the Coalition can have the most impact and further refined ours goals at our third conference at the EduPlex campus in Pretoria, South Africa.

We have divided these goals into five categories: Advocacy and the Media, Training and Education, Technology, Best Practices, and Community / Family Empowerment. This year we continuted the tradition with breakout discussion sessions on these topics that will evolve into CGHH Steering Committees with the goal of continuing this work throughout the year.

The purpose of each annual conference is to enable us to come together to share the challenges we have faced and the solutions we have developed, to raise awareness of important issues and to explore new technologies to help us meet our goals. Thanks to your involvement and to the generous support of the Bill Wilkerson Center at Vanderbilt, we continue our work to promote and enhance hearing health services in low resource communities.