Ron - You have been very effective in presenting your thoughts re the lack of aggressive advocacy for telecoils on the part of the national office in regard to hearing care providers and hearing aid manufacturers but you've been preaching to the choir.  You say you are not the one to lead an effort on marketing HLAA and possibly of developing a plan to reach out to the hearing care and hearing aid manufacturing industries on the need for telecoils but you could, I believe, very effectively share your thoughts on these matters not with us choristers but with the board of directors.

Email addresses for the board members don't seem to be made public but an open letter to all board members via Barbara Kelley detailing your thinking would certainly do no harm.  She would obviously share it with the board.  Others on this list could do likewise and such letters might result in the board's consideration of a policy that would be more aggressive in the pursuit of recognition of the endorsement and promotion of telecoil technology on the part of those industries.  This would be particularly helpful for the OTC hearing aid manufacturers who have been oblivious to the support of and need for telecoils on the part of educated hearing care consumers.  You'll recall HLAA did even call for telecoils in the devices in their comments to the FDA re the proposed rules for OTC hearing aids last summer.

As for practitioners, in their "statement of strategic intent" in 2012, the HLAA board said the association should encourage providers to follow best practices and that clinicians should offer a wide spectrum of devices and treatments, know how they work, and base care on an assessment of each person’s hearing and lifestyle needs.  I don't recall ever seeing a report to the membership on if, when and how such encouragement was and/or is being provided.  I'm sure such a report would be eagerly read by many of us.

In advocating for telecoils, every voice counts - don't quite yours...

---------- Original Message ----------
From: "Ron Moe" <ron@...>
To: HLAAGITHL@...
Subject: Re: [HLAAGITHL] Strong support of telecoils by IFHOH, Budapest Declaration #Advocacy #Telecoil
Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2022 07:11:32 -0700

Thank you Michelle and Linda for your encouraging words. It appears that I have struck a nerve. For the most part, I believe that HLAA has relied on the hearing health professionals to promote HLAA as well as telecoils and hearing loops. But as we have discovered. that effort is mostly useless. Word of mouth often works but for some reason, word of mouth fails mostly because of stigmas, plus when people do finally accept that they need hearing aids, they rely on the "professionals" instead of end users. I am speaking general of course. As I have mentioned in past posts, for whatever reasons, HLAA has not put Hearing Loops and Telecoils as a top priority. I don't know if it has to do with charters or whatever but unless we as a group begin to speak loudly and often to HLAA leadership, not just Barbara Kelly, but the board perhaps. HLAA is a great organization and has a good start but after 4o or more years of existence, the masses still haven't heard of HLAA or Hearing Loops and Telecoils. The masses have heard of AARP, AG Bell perhaps but a new way of doing things needs to happen. I wish I had the talent and skills to lead this effort but that is not my gift. I have been able to point out the real problem, but someone or some group of gifted and talented people need to take the effort forward. So many individuals have worked so hard to do their part, and they continue to believe that what they are doing is the way forward. I am 78 and I don't have another 40 years to take this on even if I had the gifts, talents and skills. But it will take another 40 years if we continue as we have been doing.