This year, on March 3rd, World Hearing Day highlights the theme
“From communities to classrooms: Hearing care for all children.”
Communities and classrooms are natural entry points to reach children, parents, and teachers to educate about the importance of hearing and detecting hearing loss. By integrating hearing care into school health and child health programmes, can help children hear, learn, and succeed.
In Canada, some children have access to early hearing detection and intervention programs, however,, comprehensive hearing care doesn’t end with a pass result. Progressive, delayed onset and milder forms of hearing loss can go undetected with newborn hearing screening.
This World Hearing Day reach out to educators in your community, share these posters, and talk with them about the important role they play in identifying undetected hearing loss.
Key messages to share include:
- Hearing loss in school aged children frequently goes undetected and undiagnosed
- Approximately 8% of Canadian school-aged children may experience some degree of hearing loss
- Children with hearing loss are at an increased risk for academic, speech-language, and social-emotional difficulties when compared with their typically hearing peers.
- Even unilateral or minimal hearing loss can negatively impact a child’s academic, social and language development.
Working together, audiologists and educators can make a difference in a child’s future!
Feder, K. P., Michaud, D., McNamee, J., Fitzpatrick, E., Ramage-Morin, P., & Beauregard, Y. (2017). Prevalence of Hearing Loss Among a Representative Sample of Canadian Children and Adolescents, 3 to 19 Years of Age. Ear and hearing, 38(1), 7–20. https://doi.org/10.1097/AUD.0000000000000345
Reijers, S. N. H., Vroegop, J. L., Jansen, P. W., Kremer, B., & van der Schroeff, M. P. (2025). The Impact of Slight to Mild Hearing Loss on Academic Performance and Behavior of 9-15-Year-Olds. The Laryngoscope, 135(4), 1511–1519. https://doi.org/10.1002/lary.31908
World Health Organization, (2016). Childhood Hearing Loss: Strategies for Prevention and Care. https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/imported2/childhood-hearing-loss–strategies-for-prevention-and-care.pdf
World Health Organization (2021) World Report on Hearing, https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240020481
Posters
Please click the images below to download announcement posters
Click link to view more campaign resources: WHO Media Library
