A Conversation with Jace Wolfe, Ph.D.!

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Take a listen to the latest empowEAR Audiology episode with Dr. Jace Wolfe, Ph.D. who is the Senior Vice President of Innovation at the Oberkotter Foundation and Hearing First.  This conversation will highlight the exciting audiology-focused pediatric learning opportunities that are planned for the Hearing First community starting in August 2023 through December 2024.  Topics for learning include a stellar lineup of experts on topics such as Genetics and Hearing Loss, Autism and Hearing Loss, Best of Pediatric Audiology Literature, Imaging of the Auditory System, Optimizing Outcomes of Children with Hearing Loss and Exceptional Needs, Balance and Management with Children Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder, and Single Sided Deafness. Take a listen to learn how you can take a deep dive into these topics while earning free continuing education credits.  

Dr. Wolfe is also an adjunct at Salus University. Other accomplishments include past editor for the American Speech Language Hearing Association’s Division 9 journal, and current co-editor for the Plural Publishing, Inc. Core Clinical Concept Series on Cochlear Implants.  Additional publications include “Cochlear Implants: Audiologic Management and Considerations for Implantable Hearing Devices, “Pediatric Audiology: Diagnosis, Technology, and Management, Third Edition” and “Pediatric Audiology Casebook, Second Edition and “Programming Cochlear Implants, Third Edition.” His areas of interest are pediatric amplification and cochlear implantation, personal remote microphone technology, and signal processing for children.  

For more information visit:  www.hearingfirst.org

You can listen to this episode wherever you stream podcasts and at www.3cdigitalmedianetwork.com/empowear-audiology-podcast

For more information about Dr. Carrie Spangler- check out her Linktree at https://linktr.ee/carrie.spangler.

For transcripts of this episode- visit the podcast website at: https://empowearaudiology.buzzsprout.com

Transcript

Announcer: [00:00:00] Welcome to episode 58 of empowEAR Audiology with Dr. Carrie Spangler.

Carrie: [00:00:14] Welcome to the EmporEARAudiology Podcast, a production of the 3C Digital Media Network. I am your host, Dr. Carrie Spangler, a passionate, deaf and hard of hearing audiologist. Each episode will bring an empowering message surrounding audiology and beyond. Thank you for spending time with me today, and let's get started with today's episode. Hey, welcome to the EmporEAR Audiology podcast. I am really excited today to have a friend and a colleague with me, Dr. Jace Wolfe, and I'm just going to read a little bio about him before he comes on the air and shares a little bit about himself as well. But Dr. Jace Wolfe is the senior vice president of innovation at the Oberkotter Foundation and Hearing First. He is an adjunct professor at Salus University. He previously served as the editor for the American Speech Language and Hearing Association Division 9 Journal and is currently a co editor for plural publishing Core clinical concept series and cochlear implants. He is the author of the textbook entitled Cochlear Implants Audiologic Management and Consideration for Implantable Hearing Devices. And he is the co editor with Carol Flexer, Jane Madell and Erin Schafer. And for the textbook pediatric Audiologist, Audiology, Diagnosis, Technology and Management. The third edition and Pediatric Audiology Casebook. The second edition. He is also a coauthor of the textbook entitled Programing Cochlear Implants The Third Edition. His areas of interest are pediatric amplification and cochlear implantation, personal remote microphone technology and signal processing for children. So Jace, welcome to the empowEAR Audiology podcast. I'm so excited to have you.

Jace: [00:02:17] Thanks, Carrie, so much. I'm excited to be here. As I've told you before, I think the world of you both as an audiologist, even more so as a wonderful person and as an advocate who's passionate about advancing the outcomes of children with hearing loss. So it is an honor to be able to talk with you today and to be a guest on your podcast.

Carrie: [00:02:40] Well, thank you for being here too. I want to say thank you. And I met oh, goodness. It's been probably. I want to say it was like 12 or 13 years ago over in Berlin.

Jace: [00:02:53] Yeah, that's true. We're getting old for sure. I can't remember. I was. Yeah, it could have been 12 or 13 or 20. I'm not for sure, but it's been a long while now.

Carrie: [00:03:01] It has been. So what? Seasoned professionals now, Right.

Jace: [00:03:06] See, I like that a lot. That works a lot better than old.

Carrie: [00:03:09] Yes, exactly. Well, since you are a seasoned professional, I always like to ask audiologist or other professionals who come on the podcast, how did you venture into the field of audiology? Do you have a story behind that?

Jace: [00:03:25] Great question. I knew for certain, even when I was a small child, that I wanted to do something in the health care field. And gosh, in elementary school I can't remember the exact grade, but I started wearing contact lenses and I loved my optometrist. And so for a while, while I thought I'd be an optometrist, but when I started my freshman year at the University of Oklahoma, I took a survey course and every week a different health care professional would come in and talk about their discipline. And one week, a gentleman named Dr. Stephen Peyton came to the class and talked about audiology, and he was just on fire about audiology. He's very, very charismatic person. He's very well-spoken. But you could tell he loved what he did and he talked about what he did and really kind of entertaining and exciting ways. And it got me interested in audiology. And so I went and shadowed him a couple of times. And watching him work, you could see his love and passion for his work, even more so in the clinic than when he was lecturing about it. And his patients loved him. And you could tell the difference that he was making in such a positive way in his patients lives. And so I really have to say that a lot of my interest in audiology, I really attribute that to meeting Dr.

Jace: [00:04:48] Peyton and just observing what he did. And I will say that I probably stayed in the audiology program because he was an instructor at the University of Oklahoma where I attended and got my master's degree in audiology and then eventually my PhD degree. He introduced me to my wife and yeah, I stayed and got a PhD degree because of him as well. So I owe him a ton and you know, I have no regrets. I'm so grateful that I didn't skip class that day that he came and talked about audiology because I love my job. It's been a perfect fit for me. I know I'm biased, but I think audiologists are so important just in really promoting the quality of life of the patients that we serve. And that's true if you're a pediatric audiologist. But as we've seen even most recently with the presentation of the results of the Achieve study with older adults, our work makes such a big difference in the quality of life and the cognitive and neurological health of adult patients with hearing loss as well. So very grateful to be an audiologist, very grateful for Doctor Peyton as well.

Carrie: [00:06:02] Well, that's just a great testament for anybody listening out there. If you're asked to go into a college or a university class and talk about what you do, if you're passionate about it, you may get someone like you who is interested and follows that path.

Jace: [00:06:22] That's true. I hadn't even thought about it from that perspective. But yeah, we are definitely walking advertisements for the field of audiology, so it's probably important to always put our best foot forward.

Carrie: [00:06:34] Right, exactly. So I know recently you've kind of made a little shift in your role as an audiologist and you do have a new role with the Oberkotter Foundation and Hearing First, do you want to share a little bit about what you do and maybe a little bit about hearing first as well?

Jace: [00:06:54] Sure, sure. So you're exactly right. I did, about four months ago, make a big professional career change For the 20 years prior to that, I had worked at Hearts for Hearing, which is a great place. And I still think the world of hearts for hearing. It's a speech and hearing clinic that serves both children and adults in Oklahoma. I love the people I worked with at Hearts for Hearing. It was a great experience. Still, obviously no regrets there, but I had worked there for 20 years and I'd kind of reached a point in time in my life where I thought that a change might suit me well in this position. This opportunity came along with the Oberkotter Foundation. It just really suits my skill set and my passion for where I think I can make my biggest difference for children with hearing loss in particular, which is always been my biggest passion. I've worked with both children and adults, but my my focus for most of my career is really kind of resided more in the pediatric space. So in March of this year, 2023, I accepted a position as the senior Vice President of innovation at the Oberkoter Foundation and the Oberkotter Foundation. It's a private family foundation. It was started by Paul and Louise Oberkotter back in 1985. So almost 40 years ago they had a daughter named Mildred or Mildie Carter, who was born with hearing loss and Mildie through a lot of work, learned to listen and talk. And she became a very successful, independent, very charming adult. But back then, it was really challenging to learn to listen and talk because we didn't have things like cochlear implants and universal newborn hearing screening and and even the type of hearing aid technology that we have today.

Jace: [00:08:49] And so this foundation was really developed to try to really optimize the outcomes of children with hearing loss to help them reach their full potential, to learn to listen and talk and just their overall outcomes that they would achieve in life. The organization has evolved over time as technology has evolved. Starting in 2013, they formed a subsidiary called Hearing First and Hearing First is a fully online digital community that has aimed to provide information for the families of children with hearing loss and then also the professionals who serve those families and those children as well. Up until about a year and a half ago, the primary focus of hearing first was to provide education and information both for families and listening and spoken language specialists or little providers. But more recently, there's also been an increased focus to provide information and education for pediatric audiologists as well. And that's one of two areas where I'm going to play a big role is in leading our efforts to provide best in practice educational experiences for pediatric audiologists. Also to I think they'll be really well received by the community still and educators and early interventionists, maybe in some cases physicians as well. And then eventually I will also lead an effort to support science and innovation, development of technologies and services that will hopefully address some of the challenges that we faced for many years and maybe move the needle or improve outcomes and quality of life for children with hearing loss. More on that later as that develops. But at the current point in time, my focus is really on the learning experiences for pediatric audiologists.

Carrie: [00:10:49] Yeah, and I know hearing first has really been a great resource for a lot of families out there for listening and spoken language professionals and those who work with children who are deaf and hard of hearing. I know I've taken quite a few courses and I've had the opportunity to present as a professional to for the hearing first community and love the learning community and the resources that they have and materials their podcast, their on demand learning. There's so many resources to explore within the hearing first community. But one of the things that I know you mentioned as your new role as innovation would be to really develop the audiology content or offerings that that hearing first is going to have. So can you maybe share a little bit about some of these upcoming learning courses that you have in the works, or is it a secret?

Jace: [00:11:51] Yeah, no, it's not a secret. We've got our calendar for the entire 2024 year finalized now and I am so excited about it. Carrie I think that that you'll be excited about it too, and I hope the pediatric audiology community is excited about it as well. And as we were developing that calendar, we really wanted to come up with subject topic areas that were really relevant and timely. We wanted to identify the areas where audiologists felt like they could benefit the most from from education, from new information. We wanted to identify areas that maybe weren't covered comprehensively in many of the pediatric audiology education programs, and that's no slight to the audiology programs. When you think about audiology and the way technology has expanded goodness, the scope of practice has become so large. And to be able to cover everything that an audiologist might do even in three years of courses and then a fourth year with the externship is really almost impossible to do it at a really in depth level. And so we're trying to identify some of those areas where either because there's not enough time to allocate to that in the programs or maybe technologies just changed so much in the last few years that there's a need to maybe bring everybody up to speed in the latest that's happening in a certain kind of sub topic area within pediatric audiology.

Carrie: [00:13:30] Okay. So I kind of think of that as maybe just in time learning when you're out there in the field and you have, um, whether it's your patients or you're getting your feet wet, you realize what some of those gaps you might have that you didn't get within your audiology program.

Jace: [00:13:51] Yeah, I hope that we meet that need for sure. We want to start out with the bang. And as I talked to a handful of people in the pediatric audiology space over and over again, I heard that genetics was a really big area of interest for for pediatric audiologists for a number of different reasons. I mean, one, maybe because it wasn't a topic that was covered in depth or in detail in their program, but also we're seeing such an increase in the number of children who are getting genetic testing. And as we will talk about in the course, there are new resources available to allow children to get genetic testing where in the past it may have been cost prohibitive to do so because sometimes the testing can be so expensive. But I can even speak from personal experience that when I receive the reports from those companies that do the genetics testing, sometimes those reports make my eyes kind of glaze over in my head spin because they're pretty complex, you know, in the way they describe the test findings. So our goal for this genetics course are really courses. It's really three fold. And one, we want audiologists to be able to review those reports and understand every aspect of the report so that they have a clear understanding of how the genetic testing would would really impact the long term outcome of that child. And we want to do that because we want the audiologist to know how they can best serve that child.

Jace: [00:15:30] Number two, And that would be just understanding how the diagnosis or the etiology might affect the child's outcomes. What type of management strategies might be best help the child to overcome any kind of challenges working with other professionals, interdisciplinary teams to address some other problems that the child might experience relative to any kind of genetic cause of the hearing loss. And then also to be able to inform families in a very family centered and also evidence based way as well, because oftentimes families have a ton of questions about those reports. And we want audiologists to be able to speak intelligently about what those reports mean for just the overall quality of life and outcomes of that child. And then finally, in third, we want audiologists to be equipped to be able to talk with other professionals at a high level about genetics and understand when genetic testing might be helpful and what the results mean as far as the management of that child is concerned. So super excited. In January, we're going to have a course that just talks about the basic fundamental science behind genetics. So it'll be chromosomes and DNA and RNA and transcription and the Molecular inheritance patterns, all the different things that you would need to know to really understand and have a good kind of foundational knowledge of genetics.

Jace: [00:17:04] And so that'll be good for a number of different people. And we're going to offer that course not just to audiologists, but everybody in the pediatric hearing health care community, including physicians and nurses and physicians assistants. Then in February, we'll follow that up with a course that talks about genetics as it relates to childhood hearing loss. So we'll talk about all the different types of recessive and dominant causes of childhood hearing loss. X-linked We'll talk about the different Nomenclatures like DF and A and DF and B and Gjb2 and what all that means. We'll talk about genetic counseling. We'll talk about how to counsel families. We'll talk about genetic therapies that might be on the horizon and what the timeline looks like for that as well. And that'll all cover the first couple of months of the year. And we were able to talk Hela Azaiez, who is one of the foremost researchers in genetics as it relates to hearing loss. She's at the University of Iowa, which has a phenomenal, just wonderful program, genetics program that focuses on childhood hearing loss. And I've heard her present before on the topic. She's a wonderful presenter. She can take really complex information and share it in a way that's easy to understand. So I think the. The pediatric hearing, health care community and beyond will really love these first two courses that we're going to offer.

Carrie: [00:18:36] And how are those courses set up? I know in the past when I've taken courses, they've all been free. You have to be there to attend to get your, you know, professional hours. But how are these how are these set up?

Jace: [00:18:50] Great question. So they're all free of charge. There's there's no cost to take the courses and every course will provide CE credits. And the way we're going to set them up for 2024. And this we have ongoing discussions right now about the length of courses and the type of courses that we would offer. We we used to have 90 minute lectures and for busy clinicians, that's a big time commitment. So we're scaling it down. And each week, like the genetics course in January, will be four weeks long to cover all the basic science behind genetics. And there will be four 60 minute recorded lectures that the audiologist can watch on their own time. And then each week there will be a live session on Monday, and that happens at 8:00 Eastern Time. And that live session will give participants an opportunity to interact with the instructor. And that'll also be 60 minutes long as well. One huge difference for what we're going to do in 2024 compared to the past is that we will make the live sessions available after the fact. So busy clinicians with busy lives they might have a child who has basketball practice on Monday night at eight Eastern, or they might want to go see a show or something like that or watch The Bachelorette on Monday night, you know? And so if they have something, some kind of conflict on Monday night, they'll be able to watch it later and they'll have 30 days after the end of each course. So for the January course, you'll have all the way to the end of February to watch all of those lectures, both the recorded and the live lectures, and you'll be able to get full credit for that.

Carrie: [00:20:41] Oh, that's nice because I know like, yeah, that's been a challenge sometime for me is to in order to get all of the credit, I wasn't able to attend every single, you know, lecture. And then if you miss one, you don't get the credit. I mean, you still can get the information, but you don't get the credit.

Jace: [00:20:58] Yeah, you know, we want to we our primary goal is to to improve the outcomes of children with hearing loss. That's that's the primary mission. And so I think the best way to do that is to make sure that the information is as accessible as it possibly can be and that it's convenient as it possibly can be to access. And so we need to make sure that when clinicians are going to invest time in this, that they can get the full benefit and reward. And part of that is getting CE credits. You know, you only have a finite amount of time and as a busy clinician, you know, at the end of the day, you might just simply be tired or you might not feel well. And, you know, even if you don't have a conflict, it might be difficult to do it at a certain night, but you might find yourself waiting outside of your daughter's volleyball practice with 30 minutes to spare in the parking lot. And you could watch the lecture at that time, you know. So and we're also experimenting going forward, probably not in 2024, but with micro learning, because right now, especially younger generations, they learn in, you know, 140 or 280 character chunks, you know, on Twitter or they watch videos for 15 or 30s on TikTok. And so how can we package the most important information in a really concise way, too, so that, you know, it comes across on your social media feed or an email and you get the highlights that could really make a difference in how you serve children with hearing loss. So more to come on that front, too.

Carrie: [00:22:32] Yeah. So that were all of your innovation comes in into play, right?

Jace: [00:22:38] That's going to be a part of it for sure. Um, and you know a lot of pie in the sky stuff. I mean, with artificial intelligence. Now I've played around with, you know, presentations where you can create a PowerPoint presentation and then you can have a digital avatar that is indistinguishable from a real human, and that digital avatar can give your presentation. And so the sky is the limit on what we can do in the future. I think we might be able to create programs that would be digital avatars of parents and maybe professionals could practice providing, you know, news about, you know, a new diagnosis of a child with hearing loss and new identification. And they could get real time feedback from a digital avatar, and that would give them an opportunity to experience that before they have to do that, live with real people. And again, that's kind of pie in the sky. There's still a lot of development that would be necessary to make something like that happen. But those are the types of things that I think we can do in the future and types of things that we're considering for professional education may be a program that would generate simulated ABR waveforms, and you could mark those and analyze those on the fly because there's obviously so much knowledge and experience required to do that well. So I think it's going to be a lot of fun as we leverage some of this explosion that we're seeing in AI and technology and how we can apply that to the education of audiologists, both in professional settings and at the level as well.

Carrie: [00:24:10] And there's so much to explore at such a fast pace, too.

Jace: [00:24:14] Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Jace: [00:24:17] Without a doubt. But I'm so excited. I don't know. You know, there's 12 months obviously in the year and so we have a different topic for every month. But yeah, I would love.

Carrie: [00:24:26] To hear about you kind of talked about the first couple of months, but you, you got us through the winter here. Jace What what's coming up in the spring?

Jace: [00:24:39] Well, you tell me to stop when you want me to stop because I could stay here all day and talk about what we're going to do with the learning experiences in 2024. But in March we're going to have a learning experience on autism and the optimal audiology management of children who either have autism or there is a suspicion that the child has autism because so many kids, you know, if they're not speaking and the language doesn't appear to be developing, one of the first steps is to get a hearing test, to rule out hearing loss before they move on and have neurodevelopmental testing to diagnose autism. And so we were fortunate enough to get Jim Bodfish, who is a psychologist and a neuro developmental specialist at Vanderbilt. He's invested his entire career in studying autism, and he's going to give a lecture just kind of on the fundamentals or basics of autism. And then that's going to be followed up by two weeks where Ann Marie Tharp will talk about assessment, audiology, assessment issues with children who have autism. And then in the third week, management of children with autism, special considerations for fitting hearing aids, cochlear implants, that sort of thing. So I think that will be well received because I know as somebody who recently was in the clinic, that that can be really challenging to make sure you provide the best care for for children sometimes who, you know, are kind of averse to that care being provided.

Carrie: [00:26:09] Right? Yeah, We see a lot of that in the schools Having that dual diagnosis or trying to get a dual diagnosis I guess would be another challenge too. So we've got genetics and autism. What else do you have? Do you have a summer summer thing?

Jace: [00:26:26] Yeah, well, we can keep rolling in April. We're going to have a best of in the 2023 pediatric audiology literature. So we're going to have an all star cast. Jay Hall, Marlene Bogado, Renee Gifford and Ryan McCreary. And they're going to review some of the best articles that were published in 2023 and diagnostics and hearing aids and cochlear implants and then in miscellaneous issues. And so that should be a lot of fun because again, oftentimes when you're super busy in the clinic, it's hard to keep up with the literature. And there are so many journals out there, Even if that's all you ever did, it would be impossible to find all the best that's out there. So I think that this will provide something for everyone who would participate in that course, because I'm almost certain that at least some of these articles will be articles with which the participants aren't familiar. After that, in May, one of the things I'm most excited about a gentleman named Anthony Alleman, who's a medical doctor, he started out as a cochlear implant surgeon. He had completed a Neurotology residency and fellowship, but then went back and got or completed a fellowship in radiology as well. And he's a diagnostic radiologist now, and he's going to talk about imaging of the auditory system. And the goal will be the audiologists will be able to look at an MRI scan or a CT scan and identify all the relevant structures of the ear and be able to determine if it looks atypical or if it's typical and what that would mean for the management of the child as well.

Jace: [00:28:01] So I think that will be really exciting because that's something that we typically don't get a lot of in the program and it can kind of be intimidating if those kind of images are are put up in a staffing with other professionals and it just looks like a big black and gray bob on the screen. And it's kind of challenging to know what you're looking at. So I'm hopeful that that will be helpful as well. Um, and then in June, we're going to have a series of classes on optimizing the outcomes of children with exceptional needs. And we're going to have Angela Bonino from Vanderbilt University, who does great work in this area. Children with neurocognitive disorders, visual disorders, motor disorders. And she's going to talk about assessment and management for two weeks. And then Schuman He and Holly Teagle are going to finish up that course talking about cochlear nerve deficiency and how that's diagnosed and ideal management for that. So that'll take us through the first half of the year.

Carrie: [00:29:05] Wow, that's a great lineup. And are all of these going to be I think you mentioned Monday nights for the genetics or are they kind of different depending on the speakers?

Jace: [00:29:16] That's a great question. Most likely we'll have Monday night that will feature new courses for audiologists and then many months we will also have a Thursday night course that will be a repeat of a course that's been offered in the past. So like a repeat on middle ear measurements and otoacoustic emission measurements and a repeat on programing cochlear implants as well. So it's going to be a really full calendar. And I don't want to again, I don't want to bore your listeners, but we're going to have the rest of the way. Balance Assessment Management. Violette Lavender at Cincinnati Children's. I just want to say this because I'm excited about the topics and I don't want any of our great instructors to be left out, but I think that will be a really interesting course. Dr Lavender is an expert in that area and also sees patients clinically at Cincinnati Children's. In August, we're going to have a three week course on auditory Neuropathy spectrum disorder, led byThierry Morlet, who has worked his entire career with Chuck Berlin. And Linda Hood just published a two series article in ear and hearing looking at outcomes of 260 children served between 2005 and 2020. He's a subject matter expert in that area, and I think it'll be great. I know a lot of clinicians have a lot of questions about how to best serve children with auditory neuropathy. September, we're going to have a summary of the latest outcomes of some of the biggest studies in audiology. The LOCHI study out of Australia will cover that the outcomes of children with hearing loss study. Elizabeth Walker at the University of Iowa will cover that research out of Melbourne, where they look at outcomes of children who have been implanted before nine months of age with Shani Dettman and then the child development after cochlear implantation study, which was started by John Niparko many years ago.

Jace: [00:31:21] But they have outcomes now for children who are well into their teenage years. And Andrea Warner-Czyz is going to talk about that. Three more months October single sided deafness with Hillary Snapp at the University of Miami, who's an expert in this area, particularly with bone conduction devices and cross devices excuse me. And then Lisa Park, who is an expert in this area as well, particularly with cochlear implants, November, we're going to have beyond the audiogram Ben Hornsby and Hillary Davis of Vanderbilt. We'll talk about fatigue related to childhood hearing loss. Andrea Warner Czyz will be back to talk about social emotional issues, including self-esteem and quality of life and bullying and how to help children in those areas. And then we will have Irina Castellanos, who worked with David Pisoni for years. She's now at Ohio State University. She's a psychologist and a neuro developmental specialist. And she's going to talk about executive function, theory of mind, working memory and sensory integration as well. And then the very last month, we will have Kelly Baroque and an anesthesiologist from Cincinnati Children's, and they're going to talk about sedated ADR assessment and best practices in that area. So if you can't tell, I'm excited about this, I can't wait for it to start. I'm going to take all the courses myself, and I hope it's really beneficial for professionals and even more so, I hope that this information is beneficial ultimately for the children we serve.

Carrie: [00:32:59] Wow. Yeah, that's an incredible lineup and I know many of those presenters. So you definitely have top people who are presenting their research and their clinical expertise coming up. So I'm excited too. I'm going to have to like carve out my Monday night starting in 2024.

Jace: [00:33:23] Well, thanks so much. You know, in the future, we're going to have to get you on as well to talk about everything everyone needs to know about educational audiology and the latest and greatest in that topic area. So I will definitely be getting back. Can touch with you.

Carrie: [00:33:37] Yeah, well, I would be happy to talk about my passion and purpose as well. So thank you for. For that too. But if people are interested in this lineup, can you just share a little bit more about how they can find the lineup and how they can, you know, sign up for these classes?

Jace: [00:34:00] That's yeah, that's a great question. You can go to hearing first.org and there's a professional learning community there and you register as a professional in the professional learning community. And then if you wish, you'll start getting updates or regular correspondence via email from hearing first. And we we are targeting the fall as the point in time where we'll start really promoting these learning experiences and providing more information. So they'll definitely be more to come in the not so distant future, but between now and 2024, we also have some great courses that professionals can take. Now there's one ongoing right now where Nancy Young from the University of Chicago, where they have maybe the largest pediatric cochlear implant program in the country, is talking about medical management of children with hearing loss. And it's been great as well. So you can go there now and get involved with the courses that we have scheduled between now and the end of the year and then there'll be more to come. Once you're registered, you'll get that information in the future and we're going to have a really big marketing effort to to reach out to the pediatric hearing health care community starting in the fall to make people aware of these offerings and the opportunity to get the latest and greatest information at no cost with credits as well.

Carrie: [00:35:26] That is great because I know getting CEUs sometimes and the cost can be a challenge and to be able to really have a focus on that pediatric audiology population is going to be amazing and a great addition to the hearing First Community, Are you guys still going to be targeting like the deaf educators and speech language pathologists and parents as well?

Jace: [00:35:52] Yes, Yes. Without a doubt, there will still be a very concerted effort to have lots of products and cutting edge information for providers. And then, of course, families. We want to be a lifeline for families who are newly diagnosed or children with hearing loss. And then as they progress through the journey up until adult independence. And so that will definitely still be a core focus in the middle of the wheelhouse for for hearing first. And we will continue programs that have been exceptionally successful, like the Starts Here program, which seeks to educate expectant mothers about the importance of hearing and the hearing screening prior to the child. Even being born as well. And we've been able to touch almost a countless number of expectant mothers with that program over the past two years. You can learn more about the Starts Here program and how you might be able to get involved with that at the hearing first.org website as well.

Carrie: [00:36:53] Oh, good. Well, I'm glad we were able to touch base today. And I know you are new to Oberkotter to the hearing first. Um. And being able to get your skills and use them in a different way. I'm sure it's going to continue to grow over there. Hearing first, and I'd be interested to hear what your next round or your next innovation with science and technology and how that continues to evolve too, in your role.

Jace: [00:37:24] Well, let's do this again next year and I'll be able to tell you more.

Carrie: [00:37:28] Okay, We can definitely do that. So. Well, Jace, I just want to say thank you again for being a guest on the EmpowEAR Audiology podcast. And people can get on the hearing first website and get a hold of you if they have any other questions, and then find out about all of the resources and offerings that will be happening starting in August and leading up through 2024.

Jace: [00:37:53] Well, you're very welcome. And Carrie, thank you so much again for the privilege of being on your podcast and for your friendship. It's been an honor, and I've really enjoyed it.

Carrie: [00:38:02] All right. Well, thank you, listeners, for listening to the EmpowEAR Audiology podcast. If you enjoy this, please take a moment and give a five star review that helps other listeners to find the podcast and share it with others. Thank you and have a great day.

Announcer: [00:38:19] This has been a production of the 3C Digital Media Network.