Would it be alright if I used parts of your letter to contact a few officials in the US? I do not believe we have the gusto in the tinnitus community in the US to use this resource at present, but it's a goal of mine to get a petition related to noise-induced hearing loss and accompanying legislation for prevention on "We The People" here in the states. If you get 100k signatures in 30 days, the US Government is required to respond. It doesn't necessarily mean change, but it's a step.
I should add that - after getting an e-mail from the staff of TT which indicated they "should reach out as well" - this is not about "bombarding" various government entities in order to create awareness. At least not from my perspective. This is about "getting things done". In the case of hearing loss prevention and awareness,
getting things done can be achieved in a number of ways: you can contact the health authorities directly or you can directly engage the entities who have direct contact with the public (ie. you either address the top or the bottom of the organizational pyramid).
In my case, I will be contacting the Danish Health Authority in the coming week...
http://sundhedsstyrelsen.dk/da (= top of the pyramid)
...but, I will also be contacting one of the schools in Copenhagen (= bottom of the pyramid).
In the case of the US, the entity to contact would probably be the Surgeon General's office (although the US does not have a SG at the moment due to the (constant) fighting between Democrats and Republicans).
However, depending on which "party" (= schools, health authorities, labour unions, etc.) you are addressing, selling the argument can present a problem as this article illustrates:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...r-health-and-safety-rules-landlords-told.html
In the case of schools and hearing loss prevention programmes, that may also present a challenge: for school representatives, it means more work having to integrate hearing loss awareness into the school curriculum and/or they may not even understand what the "problem" is to begin with (eg. "Tinnitus? What is that?!?"). But here's the thing: eventually, there will be one or two schools which will respond favourably. And once that happens, you can use those as future examples to other schools which are more "resistant". Sometimes, it may also make sense to team up with organizations such as HTWF.
Of course, the above concerns hearing loss & tinnitus
prevention - which is quite different to tinnitus research
funding.
Influencing tinnitus funding & research would require some pretty careful thinking about
what exactly you want to achieve and
how you want to achieve it. Simply writing to a politician, asking him/her to "do more", is useless. The politician in question would need to be supplied with some sort of roadmap describing the path to the desired solution (=endgame). And that roadmap needs to be realistic. Most politicians are not hearing loss and tinnitus experts - so cut them some slack - and present information in a digestible and meaninful way (eg. financial impact on society by refering to studies demonstrating savings that could be made by reducing hearing loss and/or disability rates amongst veterans). But sometimes getting things done is also a matter of chance and opportunity - select your politicians (= your "victims") with care. For instance, the former foreign and interior minister in the UK, Jack Straw, suffered a case of sudden hearing loss which did not recover - and he tinnitus as well as a result. So in the case of the UK, that is someone I would consider enlisting the help from...
The reason I contacted the EU Directorate for Health and Consumers, is because the items I listed in my e-mail to them are so-called "quick-wins" or "low hanging fruits" ie. initiatives which would be easy to implement (eg. earplugs at concerts). When I was a teenager in the early/mid 90s, I lived in Switzerland and we would go skiing every weekend during winter. Back then, nobody would use helmets. Today - some 20 years later - "everybody" wears a helmet. I hope that the same sort change in mentality will take place with regards to hearing loss. I also hope that it won't take 2o years.
Member
