LEANNE EMERSON is the new head of the nation’s largest accrediting body for audiologists, Audiology Australia, and the new deputy chair of the Hearing Health Sector Alliance. Here she discusses plans to grow Audiology Australia, unite the industry and raise the public profile of hearing health.
From becoming managing director of an aged care facility at age 22, to working in dementia and aged care management for more than 20 years, Emerson’s career so far has been the perfect preparation to tackle the challenges ahead for audiology. She believes fresh eyes, along with a consumer perspective and wealth of management experience in patient care, will give her an advantage as she seeks to help unite a somewhat fragmented hearing industry.
Personal experience of hearing loss also brings another valuable outlook. Her mother was diagnosed with otosclerosis and significant hearing loss at age 17 and became deaf in one ear after surgery to rectify it in the 1960s severed a nerve.
“My siblings and I inherited the otosclerosis and while I have some hearing loss, it’s remained stable for the past ten years.” Emerson says.
“Growing up I remember Mum really struggled with her hearing and there weren’t the supports or services available that there are now, so I have a perspective of what it’s like as a consumer and the impacts that not having hearing addressed adequately has on your life.”
Her mother was a nurse and so from age 15 Emerson worked part-time in an aged care facility while at school and later while studying psychology at university. After graduating, she applied for the aged care managerial job and says it was controversial in those days for a psychologist, rather than a nurse, to have this role. Over the next few years, she managed several facilities and believes a postgraduate degree in organisational psychology, covering organisational change management, building teams and healthy work cultures assisted greatly.
After eight years she returned to clinical work as a counsellor at Alzheimer’s Australia for several years, before again stepping into management roles including acting CEO of the organisation’s Victorian body across two years and through a national merger.
Values and personal alignment
When the eight state and territory organisations merged into one national body to become Dementia Australia in 2017, Emerson moved to an executive role and overall, spent more than 20 years with the organisation. While passionate about the work, she wanted to move back to a CEO role in a for-purpose, not-for-profit space that could benefit from her management experience.
“I was looking for a challenge where I thought my skills would bring something new to an organisation and help them achieve their objectives, and I wanted to do it in an area I believed I could bring the same level of passion,” she says.
“There is an overlap between hearing loss and dementia, and personal alignment with my family’s hearing loss. Audiology Australia works from a set of values that align nicely to mine.”
Tasked with leading the nation’s peak professional accrediting body and its 3,600 audiologist members, Emerson started with Audiology Australia in November 2023, and “hit the ground running”.
“I had come from a large aged-care and dementia world to a smaller but no less complex audiology world. The week I started we launched our new strategic plan, a new customer relationship management software system, had an annual general meeting and my first board meeting and most of that was on my first day!” she recalls. “It wasn’t a bad way to start because I had to ‘get down and dirty’ quickly and get across audiology, hearing health and how the sector operates.
“For a small industry, there’s a lot going on and the industry punches above its weight in terms of the hearing health care it provides. Everyone I’ve met, including our members, I’m impressed with their passion and energy; everyone genuinely cares about being able to provide exceptional hearing services, everyone is looking to improve what they do, and they’re a tenacious group.”
Unifying the sector
On one hand, she says the industry is fragmented with different perspectives, agendas, and focus areas, and while it’s obvious that people are working hard and passionately towards better outcomes, “they’re not always doing it in a joined-up way”.
“The fact there are different drivers for each perspective of the four largest stakeholder groups – clinicians, industry, research and consumers – means we are not always as strategic as we could be,” she says.
“The challenge is to come together to keep our eye on the big picture. The Hearing Health Sector Alliance (HHSA) provides a vehicle to have a united voice, comprising groups with members from professional bodies, consumers, research and industry, headed by Jane MacDonald from Hearing Business Alliance. I am the newly elected deputy chair of of HHSA and see real opportunities for us to have significant impact across the sector.”
The alliance plays a fundamental role in addressing more than 140 recommendations of the Roadmap for Hearing Health, setting five priorities and a comprehensive action plan. Audiology Australia, as part of that group, has several objectives it wants to achieve in coming years.
According to Emerson, HHSA is the ideal vehicle for a united voice to government.
‘‘At the end of the day, we’re all trying to ensure the patient/consumer gets the best hearing health care they can – that’s an easy focus to agree on,” she says.
Priorities and goals
Emerson says her new direction is a more bold, assertive approach to addressing key issues for members. “Audiology Australia is a mature organisation that has a wealth of wisdom from more than 3,600 members to draw on, so we need to garner those perspectives and be responsible but also confident and bold in the way we represent them to government.”
She likes open, robust discussion with transparency and says people don’t have to agree all the time but there’s a need to understand different perspectives and look for the opportunities.
“A former colleague used to say there is wisdom in the dissent, and that has stuck with me because everyone has a voice; these only add value and heighten the quality of solutions we come up with,” Emerson adds.
The immediate future is flooded with reviews and a reform agenda, and the association will focus on advocating for “what we need in audiology throughout those reviews because they are a critical moment in the evolution of audiology,” she says. These include a review into regulation of the industry.
The medium and longer-term focus is to ensure members feel heard and valued, and increasing the value proposition so they get what they need from their professional body.
A vital part is elevating the public profile to the broader community, so it understands more about the important work audiologists do.
“Everyone knows what a GP and a nurse do but I don’t know that everyone knows what an audiologist is or does,” Emerson explains. “We want a public awareness campaign – there have been several already including our recent substantial one – Audiologists. We Hear You!, and we’ll continue to campaign to ensure the profile of hearing health and the work of audiologists is elevated.”
National campaign needed
“We need a national campaign to look at hearing loss risk reduction, and to demystify and destigmatise whatever it is holding back people from having their hearing checked and taking on board recommended devices or programs.
“It would help people understand more about the importance of hearing health and consequences to quality-of-life of not pursuing any concerns.”
One of HHSA’s aims is funding for such a campaign and the alliance will advocate to government for this, she reveals.
“This is the point, working in silos each part of the sector can do some promotion or advertising and people hear about a certain offer or company, but they’re not getting information about why hearing health is so important,” she says. “HHSA is well positioned to do that from a sector wide perspective in the interests of improving hearing health for Australians.”
Improving access to services for people from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander background is another of Audiology Australia’s priorities. Building capability across the profession to ensure First Nations peoples have access to hearing health care in a culturally appropriate manner is part of the organisation’s Reflect Reconciliation Action Plan.
Securing audiologists and audiometrists in rural and remote areas is another item near the top of the Audiology Australia agenda.
Professionals are often unwilling to relocate to these areas and those in these regions work hard travelling to service their local populations.
“Many rural employers have trouble attracting staff and we need to look at solutions. I know of audiologists who regularly fly from Melbourne to Darwin to provide services in remote areas for example,” she says.
Screening of aged-care residents
A significant challenge though, she says, lies with elevating the profile of allied health more broadly and audiology specifically. At all levels – government, industries and community – allied health professions are too often an afterthought, she adds.
“The Royal Commission into Aged Care identified significant gaps in the provision of allied health services into aged care, for example, yet we have the lowest number of allied health services in aged care than ever before.
“We know that 73% of people over the age of 70 have moderate to severe hearing loss, yet there is no government funded program to routinely screen aged care residents.
“Audiologists have to work harder to have their voices heard through the busy reform agenda.
“There’s a lot of discussion which comes up around regulation, what it means, the options, the benefits, disadvantages, but fundamentally there are a few key changes we would like to see for the profession and at the top of that list, is protection of title.”
Other challenges include systemic issues including limits to prescribing and referral rights, which mean audiologists cannot go about their work in the most seamless way.
One example of referral rights for audiology – being assessed as part of a national scope-of-practice review – is that if audiologists need to perform diagnostic scans, they cannot refer directly for them. Instead, the patient needs to see a GP for a referral – an extra step the association argues is unnecessary.
There might be a lot on the ‘to do list’ in the world of hearing health but Emerson is up for the challenge and believes the future is bright if the sector can come together and put aside individual biases for the overall good of the community.