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Read the full transcript here

On episode 89 of the All About Audiology podcast, Dr. Lilach Saperstein speaks with audiologist Batya Jacob. Batya is an audiologist by profession and also is the founder of a free hearing aid lending program. When Batya shares the origin story behind the program, when her son needed to get hearing aids, she realized that medical insurance in general doesn’t cover hearing aids and that they are quite expensive. She now supports those who are Deaf or HoH with organizing a free lending program. This program is open to the global community and anyone can benefit from it; even you! Contact batyaj@ou.org for more information. 

This week on the All About Audiology podcast:   

• 7:00 –  Since hearing aids are expensive, parents may want to put money aside in a special place for the future’s sake.

• 8:00 – Most medical insurance companies do not cover the cost of hearing aids

• 10:40 -If a hard of hearing child is prescribed the use of hearing aids, it’s important that they have access to properly fit hearing aids as soon as possible

• 21:00 – The earlier young individuals learn about inclusion, the more likely they will be attuned to equitable access as an adult, employer, etc.

• 25:00 – It is so powerful when a community promotes a sense of collective sharing in order to take care of each other!

• 29:00 – Give your child the proper time and attention that they deserve in order for them to reach their full potential.

For more resources and research visit:

All About Audiology Website 

All About Audiology Facebook group  

All About Audiology Instagram

And the Prodana pay-it-forward platform here: https://prodana.org/practioner/lilach-saperstein/audiology-counseling–dr–lilach-saperstein

(Guest Links)

Mentioned in this episode:

• Yachad

Listen Next/Related Episodes

• All About Equipment- Episode 33 with Dr. Julie Renshaw
• All About Innovations In Hearing Aids – Episode 76 – with Dr. Jodi Saski-Miraglia
• All About The Stigma and Benefits of Hearing Aids – Episode 77 with Dr. Brian Taylor

Transcript

All About Audiology Transcription

Dr. Batya Jacobs:

I work for Yachad. But I’m an audiologist, I understand how hearing aids work, I understand how hearing loss works, we could create a system where we collect used hearing aids from people because they’ve got new hearing aids because they’re not using them for whatever reason, because unfortunately, somebody has passed away… Let’s collect those hearing aids. Let’s work with audiologists and hearing aid dealers in different parts of the country, and it’s spreading around the world a little bit now, where we can offer to people, a free lending program, where people can send us their audiograms, their hearing loss table, and we can match as close as possible the hearing aids we have in our stock to their hearing loss.

Dr. Lilach Saperstein:

Welcome back to the All About Audiology podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Lilach Saperstein. And on this show, we talk about so many different aspects of audiology and your experience with the field of audiology. Because there is so much that goes with it. It’s not just for testing and maybe getting devices, but it’s a much bigger experience of how this affects your life, your child’s life, someone that you love. So we are always talking about the different elements of having someone in your life who is deaf or hard of hearing, especially a child. Or if that is your experience. In addition, the professionals that are working with this wonderful population, we have SLPs, and audiologists, and teachers, joining and tuning into the podcast. So thank you all for being supporters of the All About Audiology Podcast. Today on the show, we’re talking about the price of hearing aids and the prohibitive access to devices when you need them and cannot get access to them. Well, what are you to do? There are so many incredible people lobbying, and working with insurance, and trying to change laws to make it that these very expensive devices can be accessible to more and more people. But there is someone doing something very unique… So I’m excited to introduce you to Batya Jacob, an audiologist in New Jersey, who is going to be telling us about free lending society and other things. So welcome Batya to the show. 

BJ:

Thank you for having me. Such a pleasure to meet you and to be here. 

LS:

Thanks. I love talking. That’s number one. But also love learning about what is going on underground. As this is an issue a lot of people have. We hear it from everybody. So so expensive, 1000s of dollars expensive to get a pair of hearing aids, I mean, even just one. And in early intervention, things are covered. If you have really good insurance, things may be covered. And of course, this is also different in many different parts of the world. A lot of different countries have different ways that they set it up. So I’m curious to hear how you got into this. But before that, I am interested in your background and how you even got into audiology. 

BJ:

I think it started when I was a little kid. I read a lot of books about Helen Keller, and I got very motivated by her life. So I decided that I wanted to work with this deaf and hard-of-hearing population and coming from a world of… my father was a pediatrician, and so I have this medical model in my head, I decided I wanted to go into audiology. I was a student in speech and hearing at Boston University’s. [It was a] different century. I then met my husband who has a deaf brother, you know, God leads you in different ways. We decided to get married, I kind of became the, in some way, the sign language interpreter of the family, certainly at all religious celebrations of the family because nobody really in that family knew sign language and he was communicating with sign language. 

LS:

And at what point did you learn sign language?

BJ:

I decided to take a sign language class in college because I said if half the people who are coming to me communicate by sign language, I need to be able to communicate with them. Whether I wanted my clients to be able to speak or sign I needed them to communicate and how am I going to be able to communicate with people if they’re only coming in signing?

LS:

Wow. This has to be a whole other episode.(Laughs)

BJ:

A whole other conversation about communication, which is really truly a whole different discussion. And I’m not an interpreter in any way, trust me. So I became this like, kind of in lieu of a real sign language interpreter, it was me. My husband and I got married, we had three children and then we had a set of twins, and the twins: girl and boy are at birth. Probably two hours later I turned to my husband, I said I can’t tell you our daughter hears I know our son is hearing less than cheese… and everybody said to me, you’re crazy, you are this hyper-crazy parent, why are you putting problems where they aren’t?. This was before universal screening of babies. The twins are now 32 and a half. They didn’t want to test him in the hospital, they said I was absolutely out of my mind. They made every excuse possible. And I was so sure he could not hear the same as his twin sister. I was trained to look at babies and listen to them hear [and] see what they were doing. I literally bundled the two babies up. Took them up to my graduate school program at the University of Connecticut to my professors. And sure enough, my daughter’s hearing was normal. And my son had a severe to profound hearing loss.

LS:

You were able to see that so soon after birth.

BJ:

Literally, I tell you, within hours of his birth. It was so clear that the phone would ring that she would stop nursing and he would just keep nursing. We had hearing aids on him by the time he was five weeks old, to a point wh