{"id":3591,"date":"2019-02-27T14:10:49","date_gmt":"2019-02-27T19:10:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/sphs\/?p=3591"},"modified":"2019-03-01T09:05:54","modified_gmt":"2019-03-01T14:05:54","slug":"creating-accessible-and-sustainable-health-care-a-unc-doctor-of-audiology-students-call-to-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/sphs\/2019\/02\/creating-accessible-and-sustainable-health-care-a-unc-doctor-of-audiology-students-call-to-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating Accessible and Sustainable Health Care: A UNC Doctor of Audiology Student&#8217;s Call to Action"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\">\n<!-- iframe plugin v.5.2 wordpress.org\/plugins\/iframe\/ -->\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IKRcpYZxpfo\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" 0=\"allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;\/iframe\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\"><\/iframe>\n\n<p>Jenna Sawafta is a third-year Doctor of Audiology student who has combined her passion for sustainable health care with reaching underserved populations in the Middle East by creating a series of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UC6hYz4LpJjsLZBQ6kAs1Zyg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">YouTube<\/a> videos designed to provide quality and accessible health care resources to those who speak Arabic.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Some people still live in villages where they\u2019re hours from a major medical center,&#8221; Sawafta explained. &#8220;Political situations might not allow them to get the care that they deserve.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sawafta explained that humanitarian aid groups that visit the Middle East often result in short-term solutions for hearing aid health care, instead of creating sustainable, long-lasting resources for those who need medical care.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe next time they might see somebody who\u2019s trained to know what a hearing aid does and how to work it, could be six to twelve months when that organization returns,&#8221; Sawafta said.\u00a0\u201cI think hearing is a really wonderful part of life. And if we\u2019re able to help people access that, I think it\u2019s a really big privilege.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sawafta, whose program is housed in the\u00a0<a style=\"background-color: #ffffff\" href=\"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/sphs\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences<\/a>, is a trainee with the <a style=\"background-color: #ffffff\" href=\"http:\/\/www.cidd.unc.edu\/Education\/LEND\/Default.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disciplines<\/a>, an interdisciplinary program offered by the <a style=\"background-color: #ffffff\" href=\"http:\/\/www.cidd.unc.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities<\/a>. She credits the LEND program, under the leadership of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/sphs\/directory\/jackson-roush-phd\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jackson Roush, <\/a>PhD, with sparking her idea for the informational videos.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI sat in [his] office and I told him, \u2018I don\u2019t really know what I want to do,'&#8221; Sawafta explained. &#8220;He asked me: What are you passionate about?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Roush, who practiced audiology for 35 years and is a professor with the audiology program, encouraged Sawafta to pursue a project that would combine her love for audiology while addressing issues of sustainable humanitarian health care in the Middle East.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe LEND program is honestly, probably like the biggest blessing of my whole graduate career,\u201d Sawafta said.<\/p>\n<p>The YouTube videos are meant to be a sustainable resource that parents can access in order to troubleshoot hearing aids and various issues they may encounter.<\/p>\n<p>Her interdisciplinary training with the LEND program led her to realize her love for working with children who have multiple developmental disabilities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s been a really wonderful opportunity to realize this whole other area that I didn\u2019t even know I was passionate about,\u201d Sawafta said.<\/p>\n<p>The division is one of seven housed in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Department of Allied Health Sciences<\/a> in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">UNC School of Medicine<\/a>. Ranked fourth by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usnews.com\/best-graduate-schools\/top-health-schools\/university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill-199120\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">U.S. News and World Report<\/a>, the audiology program is among the best in the country.<\/p>\n<p><em>-Brooke Love, communications intern<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jenna Sawafta is a third-year Doctor of Audiology student who has combined her passion for sustainable health care with reaching underserved populations in the Middle East by creating a series of YouTube videos designed to provide quality and accessible health care resources to those who speak Arabic. &#8220;Some people still live in villages where they\u2019re &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/sphs\/2019\/02\/creating-accessible-and-sustainable-health-care-a-unc-doctor-of-audiology-students-call-to-action\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Creating Accessible and Sustainable Health Care: A UNC Doctor of Audiology Student&#8217;s Call to Action\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55977,"featured_media":3612,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"layout":"","cellInformation":"","apiCallInformation":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","odd"],"acf":[],"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/sphs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/600\/2019\/02\/Sawafta_headshot.jpg","featured_image_medium":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/sphs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/600\/2019\/02\/Sawafta_headshot-300x200.jpg","featured_image_medium_large":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/sphs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/600\/2019\/02\/Sawafta_headshot-768x512.jpg","featured_image_large":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/sphs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/600\/2019\/02\/Sawafta_headshot-1024x683.jpg","featured_image_thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/sphs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/600\/2019\/02\/Sawafta_headshot-150x150.jpg","featured_image_alt":"","category_details":[{"name":"News","link":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/sphs\/category\/news\/"}],"tag_details":[],"_links_to":[],"_links_to_target":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/sphs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/sphs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/sphs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/sphs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55977"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/sphs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/sphs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/sphs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/sphs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/sphs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/sphs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}