Danielle Powell, AuD PhD, has been awarded a K23 grant to study hearing healthcare in older adults. Her project, HEAR-PC: Advancing Hearing Health in Aging: Multilevel Factors and Pragmatic Solutions in Primary Care, will investigate methods for improving access to care. 

HEAR-PC: Advancing Hearing Health in Aging: Multilevel Factors and Pragmatic Solutions in Primary Care
Hearing loss is highly prevalent yet underdiagnosed and undermanaged in older adults, incurring increased health risk and care utilization. Many older adults never access hearing care due to constraints in care delivery models which limit attention to hearing at the point of care. The proposed research will leverage electronic health record analytics alongside qualitative research and intervention co-design to 1) identify multi-level factors which support older adult hearing loss identification, documentation, and management, 2) develop a hearing education resource tool kit for use in primary care, and 3) pragmatically pilot the toolkit for feasibility with long-term goals to improve opportunities to support older adult hearing concerns and management in systematic and scalable ways filling gaps for wholistic and higher quality care.

Dr. Danielle Powell is a dual-trained Audiologist and Epidemiologist. She received her AuD from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and practiced in the greater Washington D.C. area for a number of years before pursuing a PhD in Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health with a focus on epidemiology of aging and postdoctoral training in health services. Her work sits at the intersection of hearing health, aging, public health, and health systems. Her research focuses on health equity issues affecting older adults, particularly how hearing loss, chronic conditions common in aging like dementia and diabetes, and caregiving intersect with access to care, health system navigation, and health outcomes for aging populations. Drawing on both clinical audiology experience and population-level research, she examines barriers to care delivery and identify opportunities to better integrate sensory health into medical and policy decision-making for older Americans.

Dr. Powell currently serves as the Director of the Doctoral Program in Audiology and is the Director of the coordinated AuD/Masters in Public Health Degree. She has a secondary appointment at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Department of Epidemiology Division of Gerontology. She is an affiliate faculty member of the University of Maryland Institute for Health Computing. She is the director of the AuD/Masters of Public Health dual-degree in collaboration with the UMD school of public health.

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