Carrie Nieman MD, MPH

Instructor in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Division of Otology, Neurotology, and Skull Base Surgery, Johns Hopkins

Dr. Nieman is a clinician, researcher, and social entrepreneur committed to eliminating hearing care disparities among vulnerable older adults.  She is currently an Instructor in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Division of Otology, Neurotology, and Skull Base Surgery at Johns Hopkins and a Core Faculty member in the Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health and will become an Assistant Professor in July 2018.  During otolaryngology residency, Dr. Nieman completed two years of dedicated research training through a T32 program as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Johns Hopkins Center on Aging and Health. During those two years, she collaborated with colleagues from across gerontology, intervention research, community-based participatory research, and social design to develop a theory-driven affordable, accessible, and community-delivered approach to hearing care designed for older adults, known as HEARS. Building upon preliminary pilot studies, the HEARS intervention is currently being evaluated through an NIDCD-funded randomized controlled trial in Baltimore, MD.  HEARS has been cited as a promising innovation in accessible hearing care by a recent Lancet report and, beyond Baltimore, is being piloted nationally and internationally. In an effort to accelerate the pipeline for innovative hearing care solutions, Dr. Nieman co-founded and served as the founding Executive Director of a social enterprise, Access HEARS. Drawing upon these diverse roles, Dr. Nieman aims to integrate design thinking into a mixed methods approach as a tool to accelerate the pipeline of behavioral intervention research.