Innova Junior College
Students of NUS MSc Audiology Programme successfully hosted a full-day event from 9am to 4pm on 31 October 2017 at Innova Junior College.
The event’s theme was “Hear Today, Gone Tomorrow!”, and our main objective was to educate teaching staff on the importance of good hearing health and practising proper hearing habits to protect their hearing. We achieved our objectives through organising the award-winning public health initiative “Dangerous Decibels” workshop on noise-induced hearing loss for a core group of 18 teachers, including the school’s vice-principal.
We also conducted a variety of basic hearing health checks, such as video otoscopy and audiometry screening, for 61 individuals from both teaching and non-teaching staff. 71 students were also actively engaged throughout the event using a humanoid sound-level meter, “Luna”, that allowed them to test their preferred headsets’ sound levels.
The participants were very pleased with the conduct of the workshop and screening event, and also to learn more about their ear and general hearing health. More importantly, we managed to detect some levels of hearing loss in individuals who were previously unaware about any existing hearing issues. These individuals were recommended to follow up with their health care provider for a more comprehensive diagnostic test.
Through this community outreach program, NUS Audiology students have raised awareness about the importance of good hearing habits in the youths of Innova JC, who will go on to share this knowledge with their peers and family. Most importantly, we also changed the attitudes of teachers, who are role-models in Singapore’s society, regarding hearing health.
