Partnering with a Northwest tribal community to begin a sustainable noise-induced hearing loss prevention program

While hearing loss can affect people of all ethnic groups, Native Americans have twice the moderate to severe hearing loss of Caucasians. It has been suggested that noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) may play a significant role in this degenerative process. A CDC-funded Prevention Research Center, the OHSU Center for Healthy Communities, has begun a project called “Listen for Life” to reduce NIHL in a Northwest tribal community. In this effort, multiple health communication strategies are applied to a community-based participatory research model. Tribal communities represent a natural environment that is relatively closed and self-governing, in which the regulation of media, education, and health care are, in large part, localized. Offering the health behavior program “Listen for Life” to a tribal community necessitated obtaining acceptance by a Tribal Council. Consequently, community leaders in the relevant health and education areas became part of the planning and evaluation process. This process included identifying an advisory board, planning community events, identifying media resources, and designating the primary school classroom presentations of “Dangerous Decibels.” The intervention ultimately took the form of multiple media strategies, a school program, the community event, and a web-based booster. Preliminary results are available from the school program, and from tribal members who attended the community gathering. Work has begun to limit participation to an as-needed advisory role, to create a sustainable campaign that will be promoted by the community for years to come.