Increasing Access to Hearing Healthcare: An Assessment of Pharmacy Technician Educational Training for the Provision of Over-the-Counter Hearing Aids in Rural Alabama and Mississippi Pharmacies

Hearing loss is a major public healthconcern due to its negative association with emotional well-being, cognition,and physical ailments, such as diabetes. Access to audiologists andotolaryngologists in many regions across the US is poor or extremely limited.Rural populations are older, less educated, and have lower household incomescompared to populations in metropolitan areas. Also, with increasing age adultsexperience greater rates of hearing loss. Fortunately, the 2022 FDA Final Rulefor Over-the-Counter Hearing Aids (OTC HAs) could revolutionize assess tohearing aids and hearing healthcare by allowing adults with perceived mild-to-moderatehearing loss to purchase these devices over the counter, without medicalclearance or care from an audiologist. Pharmacies located in rural areas nowhave the option to provide OTC HAs, something previously not possible. Currently,however, there are no established guidelines for effective provision of thesedevices in pharmacies located in rural communities. Educating pharmacytechnicians to provide basic hearing healthcare related to OTC HAs use couldaddress a critical need and create a new care delivery model to ensuresustainable, long-term access to hearing healthcare. The long-termgoal of this study is to create a sustainable interprofessionalcollaborative between audiologists and pharmacists for the development of ahearing healthcare model that improves access and affordability of care inrural regions across the country. The specific aims are to 1) Determinean effective approach for educating pharmacy technicians for the provision ofOTC HAs in rural community pharmacies, and 2) Identify satisfaction of care provided bypharmacy technicians and initial performance with OTC HAs in adults withhearing loss living in rural communities. A stepped wedged clinical trialdesign will be used to study the effectiveness of a comprehensive educationaltraining program for pharmacy technicians. Technicians from rural Alabama andMississippi, placed within four different clusters, will participate in amultimodal training program for the purpose of developing basic clinical skillsto assist adults with perceived mild-to-moderate hearing loss. Additionally, adults with hearing loss who receiveclinical services from trained pharmacy technicians will be asked to report onthe care they received and benefit from their OTC HAs. The central hypotheses are a)that pharmacy technician training will result in greater understanding ofhearing healthcare concepts compared to no training, and b) the training willlead to successful provision of basic hearing healthcare to adults with hearingloss in rural communities. Theexpected outcome of this project will be the establishment of amultimodal education program, leveraging the increased access of OTC HAs, tosupport those with hearing loss in rural pharmacies across the county. Theability of pharmacy technicians to provide this support will dramaticallyincrease the availability of hearing services in rural communities, which willpositively impact the quality of life for those with hearing loss.