Federal Project Grant Award Summary

Northwestern University's Sponsored Research Division received a $284,531 Project Grant from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) under the Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders program (CFDA 93.173), effective September 1, 2026 through August 31, 2027. The award funds research translating laboratory findings on individualized hearing aid signal processing into clinical practice. The research will establish an observational clinical trial comparing hearing aid outcomes across three patient groups classified by signal modification levels (precision fit, suboptimal fit, and intermediate fitting). Using propensity score-based inverse weighting methodology, the study will evaluate whether customized signal processing adapted to individual patient characteristics—including age, hearing loss severity, cognitive capacity, and working memory—improves aided sentence intelligibility and subjective hearing ability measured at 30 days post-baseline in real-world clinical settings.

The deliverables include a comprehensive clinical dataset of diverse patient populations treated by practicing audiologists, employing the full range of fitting parameters and noise management approaches available in clinical care. This evidence-based approach aims to advance personalized hearing aid fitting practices by demonstrating the clinical effectiveness of tailoring signal processing to individual listener abilities, thereby translating cognitive and audiometric findings from controlled laboratory settings to improve patient outcomes in everyday auditory environments.