Interested in becoming a member of the World Hearing Forum and advocating for #hearingcare and #safelistening?

World Hearing Forum membership applications open now until 30 September 2023!

The World Hearing Forum is a global network of stakeholders promoting ear and hearing care worldwide. It includes three working groups: Changemakers, World Hearing Day, and Make Listening Safe (MLS).  

The World Hearing Forum are on the lookout for dynamic members to join and contribute to its activities and spread its messages worldwide.

The World Hearing Forum Changemakers group aims at inspiring people to act towards ear and hearing care for all and improve life for people with hearing loss. Through sharing stories of those with lived experience of hearing loss and with support of celebrities, it aims to raise public awereness of the importance of good hearing.

Ricky Kej, Musician

“It is important for us musicians to protect our hearing because our careers depend on it, but it is even more important for us to ensure we create and perform our music at listening levels which are safe for our audiences".

‘The grammy award-winning musician, Ricky Kej, has been a committed supporter’ of the Make Listening Safe Initiative since the launch of the Safe listening devices and systems: a WHO-ITU standard in 2019. "The guidelines are very pro music and healthy,” said Ricky Kej.

Ricky will also be working, in close collaboration with WHO, to implement the WHO safe listening guidelines developed for Live Venues and Events at the upcoming Serendipity Arts Festival, to be held in Goa, India, in December 2023.

Moses Serwadda, Uganda Federation of Hard of Hearing (UFHOH) 

"I was born and grew without any impairment and attended schools without any challenges. When I was 16 years old and in high school, in 2006, that’s when my hearing became incapacitated."

It all began when Moses bought a portable radio in 2005.  He used to turn up the music in his earbuds to the highest volume without having enough knowledge of the potential repercussions. The earphones affected his hearing, which deteriorated at an early age. His hearing loss was progressive yet gradual. He bought hearing aids, but they weren't as effective as he had hoped. He occasionally put them on and still had trouble hearing. Accepting that he would have to live with the disability was one of the hardest decisions he had to make.

Moses uses his own experience to teach to others about the reality of hearing loss and safe listening. He is a Changemaker who supports the call in the World Report on Hearing for hearing care for all and a member of the Make Listening Safe Workgroup.

What is the Make Listening Safe Initiative?

This WHO Initiative aims to influence listening behaviours among those most at risk of hearing loss due to unsafe listening, and promote safe listening practices through increasing awareness, creating evidence-based standards for safe listening and investing in research.

To discuss ways and means for promoting safe listening among youth, WHO and ITU hosted a consultation on the Make Listening Safe Initiative. Experts from the fields of hearing and audio engineering, music-makers, government regulators, civil society, and private sector industry representatives participated in the discussions. 

Outcomes

Background paper on Safe listening in video games and esports released, and work initiated to develop a WHO-ITU Global standard for safe listening in video gaming and esports. 

WHO and ITU to work with other standardization organizations, the International Electronics Commission (IEC) and the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) to harmonize safe listening standards across the world. 

The WHO Global standard for safe listening in live venues and events to be adapted by identified collaborators for implementation in professional training programmes.

Safe listening research protocol to be finalized and field tested.

WHO creates standards that outline safe listening features for a variety of situations where unsafe practices are common. These include the WHO-ITU Global standard for safe listening devices and systems and The Global standard for safe listening venues and events. WHO offers support to its Member States, private sector entities, and civil society in adoption and implementation of these standards.

WHO develops and disseminates evidence-based awareness materials for safe listening. These include:

• Media brief on safe listening.
• mSafeListening message libraries and the Be he@lthy, be mobile – a handbook on how to implement mSafeListening.
• Communication materials such as flyers, posters, brochures, infographics and social media materials.

More than 3 billion people worldwide play video games or esports, including up to 1.7 billion gamers who regularly play on consoles and/or personal computers. Available data suggests that video gaming activities are a source of unsafe listening and put gamers at risk of hearing loss and tinnitus. Read more here .

Check out, download and share WHO's awereness videos for video gamers and esports players. 

All should check their hearing from time to time, especially those who are at a higher risk of hearing loss such as those who often listen to loud music, play video games, work in noisy places, use medicines that are harmful to hearing, or who are above 50 years old. 

Use WHO's free hearWHO app for a simple hearing test. Now available in Chinese, Dutch, English, Russian and Spanish.

Research into safe listening is performed in collaboration with our global partners to better understand the current state of affairs, leverage current best practices from around the globe, and to uncover future needs for safe listening interventions.

Read our latest research:

Launch of a new website dedicated to Make Listening Safe

During discussions at the recent Consultation on the Make Listening Safe Initiative Meeting in June, attendees unanimously agreed that the initiative required heightened visibility (and audibility!) among the general public through social media.

To bolster its online presence, tech entrepreneur Brendan Morrisey, with the assistance of World Hearing Forum member, Lidia Zabala, is spearheading the creation of a new website and corresponding social media channels, to help spread the message of the Make Listening Safe Initiative further and farther.

The imminent launch of listensafe.org will be accompanied by new content created from the some of the panel sessions that took place during the consultation meeting.

We kindly ask for your help! Please help boost the reach of this new website, listensafe.org and social media channels by visiting, subscribing to and sharing them!

EURO CIU

The European Association of Cochlear Implant Users is a non-governmental and non-profit association with 33 national member associations from 25 European countries.

Federación AICE (a EURO-CIU and WHF member) runs informative school workshops (from kindergarten to university) to raise awareness on safe listening and reduce the stigma related to hearing loss and hearing device use. Over the last three years, 292 workshops have been held around Spain, reaching over 6000 students and teachers. Federación AICE is currently working with other EURO-CIU members to replicate this workshop program in other countries and languages.  EURO-CIU is  also currently lobbying to change the content of school textbooks to be more inclusive of safe listening topics.   

The Make Listening Safe Campaign UK 

The Make Listening Safe Campaign UK has been created to raise awareness in the United Kingdom about hearing loss prevention through safe listening. The campaign is expected to be launched later this year. It aims to reach 50% of people aged 10 to 40 years in UK with information on the avoidable risk to their hearing by 2030.

The  campaign has recruited many supporters, including the UK National Health Service, the National Institute for the Deaf, the Noise Abatement Society, and the UK Hearing Conservation Association, who will amplify the campaign's messages. These supporters collectively have over 100 million social media contacts in the UK. 

The World Hearing Forum Make Listening Safe Workgroup helps to spread awereness about the initiative. The  group has 74 members which have carried out advocacy activities for safe listening in the following countries so far: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Egypt, Ethiopia, Greece, India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Malaysia, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand, Uganda, Ukraine, United Emirates, United Kingdom, USA and Zambia.

Some example of activities undertaken by the group include: presentations on measurement of noise levels and safe listening among students and teacher as well as briefings for decision makers and experts of the Ministry of Health, in Chile; engagement with musicians, sound engineers and school children to promote safe listening, in Brazil; an assessment of the determinants for use of hearing protection at work and  a behaviour change campaign in Belgium; and education of teenagers and their parents with the use of digital channels (social media, video) to promote safe listening in New Zealand. Most of these efforts used multiple channels and tools to reach the target groups through educational programmes, meetings, use of TV, radio, newspapers, and social media, in order to reach a wide audience.

To support WHO’s focus area of safe listening in video gaming and esports, the working group plans on meeting with stakeholders within the video game industry to increase the awareness of the avoidable risks to hearing amongst both amateurs and professional players of video games and esports. 

You can follow their work and become a Make Listening Safe advocate by joining their LinkedIn group.

Safe Listening at venues and events with amplified music 

Nearly 25% of US adults aged 20-69 years show evidence of noise-induced hearing loss. The good news is that in a recent survey with a nationally representative sample of adults 18 years or more, over than 50% responded that they would support preventive measures in loud venues and events such as reducing sound levels, displaying warning signs, and wearing hearing protection if its available.

Hearing Care: Safe Listening Method and System for Personal Listening Devices 

Researchers in China have developed a method for measuring noise exposure that can precisely determine the actual noise sound-pressure level (SPL) and sound dose estimate as per recommendations of the WHO-ITU global standard for safe listening devices and systems, with minimal error.

University of Michigan creates interactive US maps of noise exposure

Researchers at the University of Michigan have now developed an interactive noise pollution map of the United States of America using data attained from Apple Watch and iPhone users who have opted to take part in the Apple Hearing Study.

We would like to give a warm welcome to the World Hearing Forum new members: Dirección Nacional de CEN-CINAI (Costa Rica), Habilitation/Rehabilitation and Development Center Ai Ia (Georgia), Ministry of Health Guyana (Guyana), National Hospital Organization Tokyo Medical Center (Japan), Ministerio De Salud Publica Y Bienestar Social De La Republica Del Paraguay (Paraguay), The Syrian Ministry of Health  (Syrian Arab Republic), Auditory Verbal UK (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), CIICA, CI International Community Of Action, (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), International Association of Communication Sciences and Disorders (IALP) (United States of America).

This newsletter has been curated by the WHO Ear and Hearing Care Programme. Reach out via email:

• For general enquiries related to the World Hearing Forum at  whf@who.int
• For enquiries related to the Make Listening Safe Initiative at mls@who.int 
• Is there anything specific you'd like to see more of in the WHF newsletter? Send your feedback to Carolina Pardal Belinchón at belinchonc@who.int