What’s New about Getting Older

Kathy’s latest article outlines two newly updated guidelines from the summer of 2026 to help Canadian audiologists implement evidence-based, community-minded practices for patients at risk of or living with dementia. It highlights the World Health Organization’s second edition guidelines on dementia risk reduction, which now includes hearing loss as a conditional risk factor, alongside the CSA Z2000:26 national standard, which provides a framework for integrated, person-centered home and community care.

The Fountain of Youth: Building Trust with Truth and Stopping Misinformation in Audiology

Health care providers and patients alike can be lured by the false claims of fake authorities about health issues and cures that are too good to be true. Hope springs eternal but too often we may succumb to empty or false hopes. Meanwhile, authentic scientific sources and evidence-based analyses of the benefits (or lack thereof) of treatments have become more difficult to identify. As reality and truth become elusive, trust is eroded. As trusted healthcare professionals, audiologists must preserve and promote truth to safeguard against misinformation.

What’s New about Getting Older?

The reframing of the aging agenda has become a banner for Canadian strategies in research and government initiatives. Indeed, the 2023-28 Strategic Plan of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Institute on Aging is called Reframing Aging: Empowering Older Adults

What Should Audiologists Tell Their Clients About Hearing Aids And Reducing Dementia Risk?

Hearing aids are beneficial for improving communication when they are part of comprehensive audiologic rehabilitation (AR) based on a person-centered goal-setting approach. By helping older adults set and achieve their communication goals, audiologists play an important role in promoting healthy aging by supporting them to be physically, mentally, and socially active.

What’s New about Getting Older

Beyond improving communication, it is imperative to position hearing healthcare in the broader context of healthy aging because there are important links between hearing health and many physical, mental, and social aspects.

Hearing Health and Cognitive Health: Ten Things That People Who Are Hard of Hearing Should Know

Over the last four decades, research has shown that there are connections between hearing and cognition in older adults. Over the last few years, research has turned to some important questions. What reasons explain why hearing loss and cognitive decline or dementia seem to be connected? If they are connected by a known cause, then could treatments for hearing loss reduce cognitive decline or dementia? If another cause affects both hearing and cognition, then could treatments for their common cause protect both hearing health and cognitive health? Here are ten things that people who are hard of hearing should know about what we know so far about the answers to these questions. These points will be expanded in future articles. 

Super-Aging, Super-Agers and Super-Hearing: Another Year Older, Another Year Wiser and Healthier

Canada is expected to become a “super-aged” society within the next five years. In 2025, are audiologists poised to become “super-hearing” care experts? 2025 is a super time to transform the old negative view of hearing loss as an age-related decline that leads to more age-related declines into a new positive view of hearing health as a key to healthy aging and even “super aging.”

Vision Loss as a New Potentially Modifiable Risk Factor for Dementia

The addition of vision as a new potentially modifiable risk factor for dementia is important for audiologists because many older adults with hearing loss also have vision loss. Reduced opportunities for multisensory integration and cross-modal compensation must be considered in all aspects of hearing care: screening, assessment, recommending technologies, and providing counselling or communication training.

Loneliness is Not an Age-Related Problem that Audiologists Can Solve Alone

Communication enables social relationships. Positive social relationships can have widespread health benefits. In promoting healthy aging, could audiologists do more to overcome the social isolation and loneliness of those living with hearing loss?

Quick Answers

Question #1: What should audiologists tell their clients about hearing aids and reducing dementia risk?

Question #2: What should audiologists learn from the story of the retraction of the Jiang et al. paper about hearing aids and dementia?