Severe Hearing Impairment Among Military Veterans – United States, 2010

Details

• Journal Article:
  Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR)
• Personal Author:
  Groenewold, Matthew R. ; Masterson, Elizabeth A. ; Tak, Sangwoo
• Description:
  A substantial proportion of hearing loss in the United States is attributable to employment-related exposure to noise (1). Among military veterans, the most common service-connected disabilities are hearing impairments (2), suggesting that occupational noise exposure during military service might cause more veterans to have hearing loss than nonveterans. However, a recent analysis of data from the 1993-1995 Epidemiology of Hearing Loss Study did not find significant differences between the two groups (3). To further investigate hearing loss among veterans, specifically the prevalence of severe hearing impairment (SHI), data from the 2010 Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) to the Current Population Survey (CPS) were analyzed. This report describes the results of those analyses, which indicated that the prevalence of SHI among veterans was significantly greater than among nonveterans. Veterans were 30 percent more likely to have SHI than nonveterans after adjusting for age and current occupation, and veterans who served in the United States or overseas during September 2001- March 2010, the era of overseas contingency operations (including Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom), were four times more likely than nonveterans to have SHI. These findings suggest a need for increased emphasis on improving military hearing conservation programs (HCPs) and on hearing loss surveillance in military and veterans' health systems. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Epidemiology Health Care Facilities Workforce And Services Health Promotion Hearing Hearing Loss Hearing Loss, Noise-Induced Occupational Health Safety Surveys And Questionnaires
• Keywords:
  Health-programs Health-surveys Hearing-conservation Hearing-impairment Information-retrieval-systems Medical-monitoring Military-personnel Noise-induced-hearing-loss Surveillance-programs
• Series:
  Weekly Report: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR)
• ISSN:
  0149-2195 (print) ; 1545-861X (digital)
• Publisher:
  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (U.S.)
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  United States
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  DSHEFS - Division of Surveillance, Hazard Evaluations, and Field Studies
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  4 pdf pages
• Volume:
  60
• Issue:
  28
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20039123
• Citation:
  MMWR 2011 Jul; 60(28):955-958
• Email:
  mgroenewold@cdc.gov
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2011
• NORA Priority Area:
  Services
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Collection(s):
  Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:ab9e049d6ba35f3cceb508263f1cc6363e02b1836fd729523406117ca9daf5807139312a62eba5eda7c03b38b4d13837206280cfe5073266dd38fb7514a7719c
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/183287/cdc_183287_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 183.28 KB ]