Sherri L. Smith, AuD, PhD, CCC-A, was awarded a five-year R01 grant from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), which is part of the National Institutes of Health. Smith is an associate professor of head and neck surgery & communication sciences and chief of audiology at Duke who is serving as the grant’s contact principal investigator.
The grant will support Smith’s research on whether low-gain hearing aids can help adults who struggle to understand conversations, especially in noisy environments, despite having normal results on standard hearing tests. This phenomenon is known as functional hearing difficulties (FHD).
The research project will also examine which hearing-aid features work best and whether additional hearing tests can help clinicians identify patients who are most likely to benefit.
A total of 100 adults with FHD will be enrolled in the study at two sites: Duke and The Ohio State University.
The results of the study could help improve the hearing healthcare of adults with FHD, potentially providing clinicians with better ways of evaluating patients with the condition.